IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v19y1999i3p439-452.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Chinese and Americans Agree on What Is Fair, but Disagree on What Is Best in Societal Decisions Affecting Health and Safety Risks

Author

Listed:
  • Wen‐Qiang Bian
  • L. Robin Keller

Abstract

Through surveys of students and junior professionals and interviews with business and government executives, we studied Chinese choices and fairness perceptions in risky health and safety decisions. The survey responses were compared with American responses from an earlier study by Keller and Sarin. The survey results show that the American and Chinese respondents had similar fairness perceptions, but the Chinese did not make decisions that were consistent with their fairness perceptions, whereas the Americans did. We found that the middle‐age Chinese professionals tended to make choices that were more different from the Americans than were the choices of the young Chinese management students. It is likely that these discrepancies were caused by cultural differences, with the younger Chinese tending to face a stronger Western influence. The insights from the survey results were enriched by interviews that revealed fairness perceptions of Chinese business and government executives.A framework to interpret cultural influences on decision making was also proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Wen‐Qiang Bian & L. Robin Keller, 1999. "Chinese and Americans Agree on What Is Fair, but Disagree on What Is Best in Societal Decisions Affecting Health and Safety Risks," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 439-452, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:19:y:1999:i:3:p:439-452
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1999.tb00419.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1999.tb00419.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1999.tb00419.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    2. Robert N. Bontempo & William P. Bottom & Elke U. Weber, 1997. "Cross‐Cultural Differences in Risk Perception: A Model‐Based Approach," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 479-488, August.
    3. Ralph L. Keeney & Robert L. Winkler, 1985. "Evaluating Decision Strategies for Equity of Public Risks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(5), pages 955-970, October.
    4. Ralph L. Keeney, 1980. "Equity and Public Risk," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(3-part-i), pages 527-534, June.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard, 1986. "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 728-741, September.
    7. Ralph L. Keeney, 1980. "Utility Functions for Equity and Public Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 345-353, April.
    8. Yates, J. Frank & Zhu, Ying & Ronis, David L. & Wang, Deng-Feng & Shinotsuka, Hiromi & Toda, Masanao, 1989. "Probability judgment accuracy: China, Japan, and the United States," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 145-171, April.
    9. L. Robin Keller & Rakesh K. Sarin, 1988. "Equity in Social Risk: Some Empirical Observations," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 135-146, March.
    10. Ralph L. Keeney, 1980. "Evaluating Alternatives Involving Potential Fatalities," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 188-205, February.
    11. Joanna Sokolowska & Tadeusz Tyszka, 1995. "Perception and Acceptance of Technological and Environmental Risks: Why Are Poor Countries Less Concerned?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(6), pages 733-743, December.
    12. Stephen M. Pollock & Kan Chen, 1986. "Strive to Conquer the Black Stink: Decision Analysis in the People’s Republic of China," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 31-37, April.
    13. L. Robin Keller & Rakesh K. Sarin, 1995. "Fair Processes for Societal Decisions Involving Distributional Inequalities," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 49-59, February.
    14. Elke U. Weber & Christopher Hsee, 1998. "Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross-Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(9), pages 1205-1217, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thibault Gajdos & John Weymark & Claudio Zoli, 2010. "Shared destinies and the measurement of social risk equity," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 409-424, April.
    2. Feng, Tianjun & Keller, L. Robin & Zheng, Xiaona, 2011. "Decision making in the newsvendor problem: A cross-national laboratory study," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 41-50, January.
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:3:p:214-226 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Ingrid M.T. Rohde & Kirsten I.M. Rohde, 2012. "Risk and Inequality in a Social Decision Making Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-045/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Peter H. Kriss & George Loewenstein & Xianghong Wang & Roberto A. Weber, 2011. "Behind the veil of ignorance: Self-serving bias in climate change negotiations," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 6(7), pages 602-615, October.
    6. Ingrid T. Rohde & Kirsten M. Rohde, 2015. "Managing social risks – tradeoffs between risks and inequalities," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 103-124, October.
    7. Oscar Rikhotso & Thabiso John Morodi & Daniel Masilu Masekameni, 2021. "Occupational Health Hazards: Employer, Employee, and Labour Union Concerns," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-61, May.
    8. Ehsan Taheri & Chen Wang, 2018. "Eliciting Public Risk Preferences in Emergency Situations," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 223-241, December.
    9. Thibault Gajdos & John A. Weymark & Claudio Zoli, 2008. "Shared Destinies and the Measurement and of Social Risk Equity," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0821, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    10. Yue Gao, 2009. "A study of fairness judgments in China, Switzerland and Canada: Do culture, being a student, and gender matter?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 4(3), pages 214-226, April.
    11. repec:cup:judgdm:v:6:y:2011:i:7:p:602-615 is not listed 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. Ehsan Taheri & Chen Wang, 2018. "Eliciting Public Risk Preferences in Emergency Situations," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 223-241, December.
    2. Thibault Gajdos & John Weymark & Claudio Zoli, 2010. "Shared destinies and the measurement of social risk equity," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 409-424, April.
    3. L. Robin Keller & Rakesh K. Sarin, 1988. "Equity in Social Risk: Some Empirical Observations," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 135-146, March.
    4. James K. Hammitt, 2020. "Valuing mortality risk in the time of COVID-19," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 129-154, October.
    5. Antonides, Gerrit & Kroft, Maaike, 2005. "Fairness judgments in household decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 902-913, December.
    6. Marc Fleurbaey, 2010. "Assessing Risky Social Situations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 649-680, August.
    7. Attema, Arthur E. & L'Haridon, Olivier & van de Kuilen, Gijs, 2023. "Decomposing social risk preferences for health and wealth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    8. Thomas Wagner, 1998. "Reciprocity And Efficiency," Rationality and Society, , vol. 10(3), pages 347-375, August.
    9. Bruno S. Frey & David A. Savage & Benno Torgler, 2011. "Behavior under Extreme Conditions: The Titanic Disaster," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 209-222, Winter.
    10. Konow, James, 1996. "A positive theory of economic fairness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 13-35, October.
    11. Rieger, Marc O. & Wang, Mei & Phan, Thuy Chung & Gong, Yujing, 2022. "Trend following or reversal: Does culture affect predictions and trading behavior?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:3:p:214-226 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Ertl, Antal, 2022. "Méltányos és méltánytalan különbségek az egyéni döntéshozatalban [Fair and unfair differences in individual decision making]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1170-1194.
    14. Carole Bernard & Christoph M. Rheinberger & Nicolas Treich, 2018. "Catastrophe Aversion and Risk Equity in an Interdependent World," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4490-4504, October.
    15. Xiaoxiao Hu & Xiaofei Xie, 2012. "Validation of the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale in Chinese college students," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 7(2), pages 181-188, March.
    16. John List, 2020. "Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem," Natural Field Experiments 00687, The Field Experiments Website.
    17. Luini, Luigi & Sabbatini, Pierluigi, 2012. "Demand cross elasticity without substitutability: An experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 255-265.
    18. Kjær, Trine & Nielsen, Jytte Seested, 2016. "An investigation into procedure (in)variance in the valuation of mortality risk reductions," DaCHE discussion papers 2016:4, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    19. Richards, Timothy J. & Liaukonyte, Jura & Streletskaya, Nadia A., 2016. "Personalized pricing and price fairness," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 138-153.
    20. feng dai & Jianqiang Liu, 2004. "Development Power and Derivative Process: A Mode and Theory for Macroeconomy Analysis," Macroeconomics 0403015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Mehmet Karacuka & Asad Zaman, 2012. "The empirical evidence against neoclassical utility theory: a review of the literature," International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 3(4), pages 366-414.

    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:wly:riskan:v:19:y:1999:i:3:p:439-452. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    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.