Terzi Ayse, Koedijk Kees, Noussair Charles N, Pownall Rachel
Department of Finance, Tilburg University Tilburg, Netherlands.
Department of Economics and Economic Science Laboratory, University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 Sep 12;7:1347. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01347. eCollection 2016.
It is well-established that, when confronted with a decision to be taken under risk, individuals use reference payoff levels as important inputs. The purpose of this paper is to study which reference points characterize decisions in a setting in which there are several plausible reference levels of payoff. We report an experiment, in which we investigate which of four potential reference points: (1) a population average payoff level, (2) the announced expected payoff of peers in a similar decision situation, (3) a historical average level of earnings that others have received in the same task, and (4) an announced anticipated individual payoff level, best describes decisions in a decontextualized risky decision making task. We find heterogeneity among individuals in the reference points they employ. The population average payoff level is the modal reference point, followed by experimenter's stated expectation of a participant's individual earnings, followed in turn by the average earnings of other participants in previous sessions of the same experiment. A sizeable share of individuals show multiple reference points simultaneously. The reference point that best fits the choices of the individual is not affected by a shock to her income.
人们已经充分认识到，当面临在风险下做出决策时，个体会将参考收益水平作为重要的输入因素。本文的目的是研究在存在多个合理收益参考水平的情况下，哪些参考点能够刻画决策特征。我们报告了一项实验，在该实验中，我们研究了四个潜在参考点中的哪一个：（1）总体平均收益水平；（2）在类似决策情境中同伴宣布的预期收益；（3）其他人在同一任务中获得的历史平均收益水平；（4）宣布的预期个人收益水平，最能描述在脱离情境的风险决策任务中的决策。我们发现个体在使用的参考点上存在异质性。总体平均收益水平是最常见的参考点，其次是实验者陈述的对参与者个人收益的预期，接着是同一实验前几轮中其他参与者的平均收益。相当一部分个体同时表现出多个参考点。最符合个体选择的参考点不受其收入冲击的影响。
