Delavande Adeline, Kohler Hans-Peter
Associate Economist, RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138, USA and Assistant Professor of Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia, Lisbon, Portugal.
Demogr Res. 2009 Jun 23;20:817-874. doi: 10.4054/DemRes.2009.20.31.
In this paper we present a newly developed interactive elicitation methodology for collecting probabilistic expectations in a developing country context with low levels of literacy and numeracy, and we evaluate the feasibility and success of this method for a wide range of outcomes in rural Malawi. We find that respondents' answers about their subjective expectations take into account basic properties of probabilities, and vary meaningfully with observable characteristics and past experience. From a substantive point of view, the elicited expectations indicate that individuals are generally aware of differential risks. For example, individuals with lower incomes and less land rightly feel at greater risk of financial distress than people with higher socioeconomic status (SES), and people who are divorced or widowed rightly feel at greater risk of being infected with HIV than currently married individuals. Meanwhile many expectations-including the probability of being currently infected with HIV-are well-calibrated compared to actual probabilities, but mortality expectations are substantially overestimated compared to life table estimates. This overestimation may lead individuals to underestimate the benefits of adopting HIV risk-reduction strategies. The skewed distribution of expectations about condom use also suggests that a small group of innovators are the forerunners in the adoption of condoms within marriage for HIV prevention.
在本文中，我们介绍了一种新开发的交互式诱导方法，用于在识字率和算术能力较低的发展中国家背景下收集概率期望，并且我们评估了该方法在马拉维农村地区针对广泛结果的可行性和成功率。我们发现，受访者关于其主观期望的回答考虑到了概率的基本属性，并且会因可观察到的特征和过去的经历而有显著差异。从实质角度来看，所诱导出的期望表明个体通常意识到了不同的风险。例如，收入较低且土地较少的个体比社会经济地位较高的人更能正确地感觉到面临财务困境的风险更大，离婚或丧偶的人比目前已婚的个体更能正确地感觉到感染艾滋病毒的风险更大。与此同时，与实际概率相比，许多期望——包括目前感染艾滋病毒的概率——校准良好，但与生命表估计相比，死亡率期望被大幅高估。这种高估可能导致个体低估采取降低艾滋病毒风险策略的益处。关于避孕套使用期望的分布不均还表明，一小部分创新者是在婚姻中采用避孕套预防艾滋病毒的先行者。
