IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zrh/wpaper/385.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of paper versus realized losses on subsequent risk-taking: Field evidence from casino gambling

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Meier

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

  • Raphael Flepp

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

  • Maximilian Rüdisser

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

  • Egon Franck

    (Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich)

Abstract

In this paper, we test the realization effect, i.e., that risk-taking increases after a paper loss, whereas risk-taking decreases after a realized loss, using gambling data from a real casino. During a particular casino visit, losses are likely perceived as paper losses because the chance to offset prior losses remains effective until leaving the casino. However, when casino customers leave the casino, the final account balance is realized. Using individual-level slot machine gambling records, we find that risk-taking after paper losses increases during a visit and that this effect is more pronounced for larger losses. Conversely, risk-taking across multiple visits is not altered if the realized losses are comparatively small, whereas risk-taking is reduced if realized losses are comparatively large.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Meier & Raphael Flepp & Maximilian Rüdisser & Egon Franck, 2020. "The effect of paper versus realized losses on subsequent risk-taking: Field evidence from casino gambling," Working Papers 385, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
  • Handle: RePEc:zrh:wpaper:385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/zrh/wpaper/385_IBW_full.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pagel, Michaela, 2013. "Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Life-Cycle Consumption," MPRA Paper 47138, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Loewenstein, George, 1996. "Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 272-292, March.
    3. Yu-Jane Liu & Chih-Ling Tsai & Ming-Chun Wang & Ning Zhu, 2010. "Prior Consequences and Subsequent Risk Taking: New Field Evidence from the Taiwan Futures Exchange," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 606-620, April.
    4. Michael S. Haigh & John A. List, 2005. "Do Professional Traders Exhibit Myopic Loss Aversion? An Experimental Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 523-534, February.
    5. Gary Smith & Michael Levere & Robert Kurtzman, 2009. "Poker Player Behavior After Big Wins and Big Losses," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(9), pages 1547-1555, September.
    6. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2005. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Prices?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34, February.
    7. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    8. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2012. "Salience Theory of Choice Under Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1243-1285.
    9. Richard H. Thaler, 2008. "Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 15-25, 01-02.
    10. Richard H. Thaler & Eric J. Johnson, 1990. "Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(6), pages 643-660, June.
    11. Flepp, Raphael & Rüdisser, Maximilian, 2019. "Revisiting the house money effect in the field: Evidence from casino jackpots," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 146-148.
    12. Maximilian Rüdisser & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2017. "Do casinos pay their customers to become risk-averse? Revising the house money effect in a field experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(3), pages 736-754, September.
    13. Martin Weber & Heiko Zuchel, 2005. "How Do Prior Outcomes Affect Risk Attitude? Comparing Escalation of Commitment and the House-Money Effect," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 30-43, March.
    14. Arkes, Hal R. & Joyner, Cynthia A. & Pezzo, Mark V. & Nash, Jane Gradwohl & Siegel-Jacobs, Karen & Stone, Eric, 1994. "The Psychology of Windfall Gains," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 331-347, September.
    15. Langer, Thomas & Weber, Martin, 2008. "Does commitment or feedback influence myopic loss aversion?: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 810-819, September.
    16. Nicholas Barberis & Wei Xiong, 2009. "What Drives the Disposition Effect? An Analysis of a Long‐Standing Preference‐Based Explanation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 751-784, April.
    17. Alex Imas, 2016. "The Realization Effect: Risk-Taking after Realized versus Paper Losses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2086-2109, August.
    18. Jonathan E. Ingersoll & Lawrence J. Jin, 2013. "Realization Utility with Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(3), pages 723-767.
    19. Juan Cárdenas & Nicolas Roux & Christian Jaramillo & Luis Martinez, 2014. "Is it my money or not? An experiment on risk aversion and the house-money effect," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 47-60, March.
    20. Nielsen, Kirby, 2019. "Dynamic risk preferences under realized and paper outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 68-78.
    21. Shefrin, Hersh & Statman, Meir, 1985. "The Disposition to Sell Winners Too Early and Ride Losers Too Long: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 777-790, July.
    22. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang & Tano Santos, 2001. "Prospect Theory and Asset Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 1-53.
    23. Michaela Pagel, 2017. "Expectations-Based Reference-Dependent Life-Cycle Consumption," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 885-934.
    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. Flepp, Raphael & Meier, Philippe & Franck, Egon, 2021. "The effect of paper outcomes versus realized outcomes on subsequent risk-taking: Field evidence from casino gambling," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 45-55.
    2. Mujcic, Redzo & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2022. "How Do Humans Respond to Huge Financial Losses?," IZA Discussion Papers 15536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Christoph Merkle & Jan Müller-Dethard & Martin Weber, 2021. "Closing a mental account: the realization effect for gains and losses," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 303-329, March.
    4. Maximilian Rüdisser & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2017. "When do reference points update? A field analysis of the effect of prior gains and losses on risk-taking over time," Working Papers 369, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    5. Stivers, Adam & Tsang, Ming & Deaves, Richard & Hoffer, Adam, 2020. "Behavior when the chips are down: An experimental study of wealth effects and exchange media," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    6. Niko Suhonen & Jani Saastamoinen, 2018. "How Do Prior Gains and Losses Affect Subsequent Risk Taking? New Evidence from Individual-Level Horse Race Bets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2797-2808, June.
    7. Li An & Huijun Wang & Jian Wang & Jianfeng Yu, 2020. "Lottery-Related Anomalies: The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 473-501, January.
    8. Hauke Jelschen & Ulrich Schmidt, 2023. "Windfall gains and house money: The effects of endowment history and prior outcomes on risky decision–making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 215-232, June.
    9. Fenghua Wen & Zhifang He & Xu Gong & Aiming Liu, 2014. "Investors’ Risk Preference Characteristics Based on Different Reference Point," Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, Hindawi, vol. 2014, pages 1-9, April.
    10. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    11. Jin, Miao & Liu, Yu-Jane & Meng, Juanjuan, 2019. "Fat-finger event and risk-taking behavior," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 126-143.
    12. Mugerman, Yevgeny & Sade, Orly & Winter, Eyal, 2020. "Out-of-pocket vs. out-of-investment in financial advisory fees: Evidence from the lab," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    13. Andrea Lippi & Laura Barbieri & Mariacristina Piva & Werner De Bondt, 2018. "Time-varying risk behavior and prior investment outcomes: Evidence from Italy," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(5), pages 471-483, September.
    14. repec:cup:judgdm:v:12:y:2017:i:2:p:118-127 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Matteo Ploner, 2017. "Hold on to it? An experimental analysis of the disposition effect," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 12(2), pages 118-127, March.
    16. Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel, 2022. "Fully Closed: Individual Responses to Realized Gains and Losses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(3), pages 1529-1585, June.
    17. Hsu, Yuan-Lin & Chow, Edward H., 2013. "The house money effect on investment risk taking: Evidence from Taiwan," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1102-1115.
    18. Nielsen, Kirby, 2019. "Dynamic risk preferences under realized and paper outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 68-78.
    19. Rawley Heimer & Zwetelina Iliewa & Alex Imax & Martin Weber, 2021. "Dynamic Inconsistency in Risky Choice: Evidence from the Lab and Field," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 094, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    20. Hong Chao & Chun-Yu Ho & Xiangdong Qin, 2017. "Risk taking after absolute and relative wealth changes: The role of reference point adaptation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 157-186, April.
    21. Deaves, Richard & Kluger, Brian & Miele, Jennifer, 2018. "An exploratory experimental analysis of path-dependent investment behaviors," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 47-65.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market decision making; realization effect; risk behavior; loss; field analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zrh:wpaper:385. 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: Daniela Koller (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibuzhch.html .

    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.