Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/71135 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
WZB Discussion Paper No. SP II 2012-402
Publisher: 
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), Berlin
Abstract: 
We explore situations in which a decision-maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own. For gains we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion, while in the loss domain we find increased risk seeking. In a second experiment we replicate the finding of increased risk aversion for large probabilities of a gain, while for small probability gains we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. This discredits hypotheses of a cautious shift under responsibility, and indicates an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes usually found for individual choices.
Subjects: 
risk attitude
prospect theory
social norms
responsibility
other-regarding preferences
JEL: 
D03
D81
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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