IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v9y2025i4d10.1038_s41562-024-02085-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A systematic review and meta-analyses of the temporal stability and convergent validity of risk preference measures

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandra Bagaïni

    (University of Basel)

  • Yunrui Liu

    (University of Basel)

  • Madlaina Kapoor

    (University of Basel)

  • Gayoung Son

    (University of Bern)

  • Paul-Christian Bürkner

    (TU Dortmund University)

  • Loreen Tisdall

    (University of Basel)

  • Rui Mata

    (University of Basel)

Abstract

Understanding whether risk preference represents a stable, coherent trait is central to efforts aimed at explaining, predicting and preventing risk-related behaviours. We help characterize the nature of the construct by adopting a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analytic approach to summarize the temporal stability of 358 risk preference measures (33 panels, 57 samples, 579,114 respondents). Our findings reveal noteworthy heterogeneity across and within measure categories (propensity, frequency and behaviour), domains (for example, investment, occupational and alcohol consumption) and sample characteristics (for example, age). Specifically, while self-reported propensity and frequency measures of risk preference show a higher degree of stability than behavioural measures, these patterns are moderated by domain and age. Crucially, an analysis of convergent validity reveals a low agreement across measures, questioning the idea that they capture the same underlying phenomena. Our results raise concerns about the coherence and measurement of the risk preference construct.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandra Bagaïni & Yunrui Liu & Madlaina Kapoor & Gayoung Son & Paul-Christian Bürkner & Loreen Tisdall & Rui Mata, 2025. "A systematic review and meta-analyses of the temporal stability and convergent validity of risk preference measures," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 9(4), pages 700-712, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:9:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1038_s41562-024-02085-2
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-02085-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02085-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-024-02085-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carpenter, Bob & Gelman, Andrew & Hoffman, Matthew D. & Lee, Daniel & Goodrich, Ben & Betancourt, Michael & Brubaker, Marcus & Guo, Jiqiang & Li, Peter & Riddell, Allen, 2017. "Stan: A Probabilistic Programming Language," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 76(i01).
    2. Alexandre Bran & David Vaidis, 2020. "Assessing risk-taking: what to measure and how to measure it," Post-Print halshs-03772468, HAL.
    3. Emma Norris & Ailbhe N. Finnerty & Janna Hastings & Gillian Stokes & Susan Michie, 2019. "A scoping review of ontologies related to human behaviour change," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(2), pages 164-172, February.
    4. Gunnar Breivik & Trond Svela Sand & Anders McD Sookermany, 2019. "Risk-Taking and Sensation Seeking in Military Contexts: A Literature Review," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440188, January.
    5. Levon Barseghyan & Francesca Molinari & Ted O'Donoghue & Joshua C. Teitelbaum, 2018. "Estimating Risk Preferences in the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 501-564, June.
    6. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    7. Marco Caliendo & Frank Fossen & Alexander Kritikos, 2014. "Personality characteristics and the decisions to become and stay self-employed," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 787-814, April.
    8. Lucie Schmidt, 2008. "Risk preferences and the timing of marriage and childbearing," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(2), pages 439-460, May.
    9. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    10. Arslan, Ruben C. & Brümmer, Martin & Dohmen, Thomas & Drewelies, Johanna & Hertwig, Ralph & Wagner, Gert G., 2020. "How people know their risk preference," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10.
    11. Ian W. Eisenberg & Patrick G. Bissett & A. Zeynep Enkavi & Jamie Li & David P. MacKinnon & Lisa A. Marsch & Russell A. Poldrack, 2019. "Uncovering the structure of self-regulation through data-driven ontology discovery," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-13, December.
    12. Joshua Tasoff & Wenjie Zhang, 2022. "The Performance of Time-Preference and Risk-Preference Measures in Surveys," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1149-1173, February.
    13. Barbara Å libar & Dijana OreÅ¡ki & Nina BegiÄ ević ReÄ‘ep, 2021. "Importance of the Open Data Assessment: An Insight Into the (Meta) Data Quality Dimensions," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, June.
    14. Anika K. Josef & David Richter & Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin & Gert G. Wagner & Ralph Hertwig & Rui Mata, 2016. "Stability and Change in Risk-Taking Propensity across the Adult Lifespan," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 816, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    15. Rui Mata & Renato Frey & David Richter & Jürgen Schupp & Ralph Hertwig, 2018. "Risk Preference: A View from Psychology," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(2), pages 155-172, Spring.
    16. Alexandre Bran & David C. Vaidis, 2020. "Assessing risk-taking: what to measure and how to measure it," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 490-503, April.
    17. Terrie E. Moffitt, 2018. "Male antisocial behaviour in adolescence and beyond," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(3), pages 177-186, March.
    18. Dmitry Sharapov & Paul Kattuman & Diego Rodriguez & F. Javier Velazquez, 2021. "Using the SHAPLEY value approach to variance decomposition in strategy research: Diversification, internationalization, and corporate group effects on affiliate profitability," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 608-623, March.
    19. Andreas Pedroni & Renato Frey & Adrian Bruhin & Gilles Dutilh & Ralph Hertwig & Jörg Rieskamp, 2017. "The risk elicitation puzzle," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(11), pages 803-809, November.
    20. Chuang, Yating & Schechter, Laura, 2015. "Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-170.
    21. Leah S. Richmond-Rakerd & Stephanie D’Souza & Signe Hald Andersen & Sean Hogan & Renate M. Houts & Richie Poulton & Sandhya Ramrakha & Avshalom Caspi & Barry J. Milne & Terrie E. Moffitt, 2020. "Clustering of health, crime and social-welfare inequality in 4 million citizens from two nations," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(3), pages 255-264, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arslan, Ruben C. & Brümmer, Martin & Dohmen, Thomas & Drewelies, Johanna & Hertwig, Ralph & Wagner, Gert G., 2020. "How people know their risk preference," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10.
    2. Joshua Tasoff & Wenjie Zhang, 2022. "The Performance of Time-Preference and Risk-Preference Measures in Surveys," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1149-1173, February.
    3. Baláž, Vladimír & Chen, Jason Li & Williams, Allan M. & Li, Gang, 2024. "Stability of risk and uncertainty preferences in tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    4. Rafaï, Ismaël & Blayac, Thierry & Dubois, Dimitri & Duchêne, Sébastien & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Ventelou, Bruno & Willinger, Marc, 2023. "Stated preferences outperform elicited preferences for predicting reported compliance with COVID-19 prophylactic measures," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    5. Ranganathan, Kavitha & Lejarraga, Tomás, 2021. "Elicitation of risk preferences through satisficing," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    6. Holzmeister, Felix & Stefan, Matthias, 2019. "The Risk Elicitation Puzzle Revisited: Across-Methods (In)consistency?," OSF Preprints pj9u2, Center for Open Science.
    7. Fabien Perez & Guillaume Hollard & Radu Vranceanu, 2021. "How serious is the measurement-error problem in risk-aversion tasks?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 319-342, December.
    8. Christine Gaertner & Petra Steinorth, 2023. "On the correlation of self‐reported and behavioral risk attitude measures: The case of the General Risk Question and the Investment Game following Gneezy and Potters (1997)," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 26(3), pages 367-392, October.
    9. Andreas C. Drichoutis & Rodolfo M. Nayga, 2022. "On the stability of risk and time preferences amid the COVID-19 pandemic," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(3), pages 759-794, June.
    10. Emmanuel Kemel & Antoine Nebout & Bruno Ventelou, 2021. "To test or not to test? Risk attitudes and prescribing by French GPs," Working Papers hal-03330153, HAL.
    11. Kettlewell, Nathan, 2019. "Risk preference dynamics around life events," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 66-84.
    12. Andreas C. Drichoutis & Achilleas Vassilopoulos, 2016. "Intertemporal stability of survey-based measures of risk and time preferences over a three-year course," Working Papers 2016-3, Agricultural University of Athens, Department Of Agricultural Economics.
    13. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2021. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 593-616, June.
    14. Robert Finger & David Wüpper & Chloe McCallum, 2023. "The (in)stability of farmer risk preferences," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 155-167, February.
    15. Eling, Martin & Ghavibazoo, Omid & Hanewald, Katja, 2021. "Willingness to take financial risks and insurance holdings: A European survey," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    16. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2019. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Working Papers 2019-19, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    17. Pushkar Maitra & Ananta Neelim, 2021. "Behavioural characteristics, stability of preferences and entrepreneurial success," Chapters, in: Ananish Chaudhuri (ed.), A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, chapter 5, pages 93-118, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Mark J. Browne & Verena Jäger & Andreas Richter & Petra Steinorth, 2022. "Family changes and the willingness to take risks," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(1), pages 187-209, March.
    19. Armando N. Meier, 2021. "Emotions and Risk Attitudes," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1118, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    20. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Machado, Sara R. & Miniaci, Raffaele, 2016. "Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67554, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:9:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1038_s41562-024-02085-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.