Risk Taking with Variable Resources: a Field and a Laboratory Experiment

What is it about?

The influence of available resources on risk taking in an ecologically valid field experiment was examined and compared with a laboratory experiments,,, Students were asked to choose between exam questions representing different levels of difficulty in a real life setting and in a laboratory experiment. The two experimental setups yielded different results. In the field experiment, risk taking decreased with the available resources, whereas the laboratory experiments suggested an inverse tendency. The influence of contextual effects was only prominent in the field experiment

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Why is it important?

The studies presented in this research paper advance an understanding of an important economic psychological process: how accumulated resource influences risk taking. Furthermore, the design of the experiment offer an opportunity to consider the validity of laboratory experiments in studying complex behavior. The novelty of the research is the design of a field experiment. The field experiment is suggested a/ to take into account the complexity of risk taking in real life, determined by the situation, goals, aspirations and emotions of the individuals, and b/ to investigate the propriety of the contradictory theoretical statements and empirical observations about this relationship. Two laboratory experiments with the same structure were also created to investigate the possible differences between real life decisions and hypothetical decisions,

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