Journal
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Volume 12, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/bs12040092
Keywords
decision-making; uncertainty; preferences; ambiguity aversion; risk aversion; culture
Categories
Funding
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [22120210080]
- Special Science and Technology Project of Shaoxing Science and Technology Bureau [2020B333004]
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Research shows that Easterners are more risk intolerant but more willing to accept ambiguous conditions in the gain domain compared to Westerners. Surprisingly, Easterners and Westerners have similar attitudes towards risk and ambiguity in the loss domain. Cultural differences between Western and Eastern countries may explain the higher level of risk aversion observed among East Asians.
It has long been known that Easterners exhibit more conservative attitudes, cautiousness behaviors, and self-control ability than Westerners; people in Eastern countries show stronger defensive reactions to societal threats than Western people. Are East Asians really risk averters or do some richer underlying preferences drive their behaviors in their decision-making under uncertainty? To answer this question, we examined the risk and ambiguity attitudes of East Asian populations in both gain and loss domains using classical behavioral economic experimental methods. Based on our sample of university students, we found that Easterners are more risk intolerant but more willing to accept ambiguous conditions than their Westerner counterparts in the gain domain. Perhaps surprisingly, Eastern people and Western people have a similar attitude toward risk and ambiguity in the loss domain. The higher level of risk aversion observed among East Asians may be due to the cultural difference between Western countries and Eastern countries. Historically, such risk aversion may make sense, because it would minimize the influence of numerous ecological and historical threats and socio-political practices. Our findings suggest that models that were designed to analyze and predict aggregate behaviors and markets may be ineffective for Eastern populations, and, in the future, it is of significance to develop appropriate representative agent models from the eastern perspective.
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