Hill Tetiana, Kusev Petko, van Schaik Paul
Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom.
Huddersfield Business School, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2019 Aug 30;10:2003. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02003. eCollection 2019.
In the last decade, a number of studies in the behavioral sciences, particularly in psychology and economics, have explored the complexity of individual risk behavior and its underlying factors. Most previous studies have examined the influences of various socio-economic, cognitive, biological and psychological factors on human decision-making, however, the relationship between the decision-makers' risk preferences and occupational background has not received much empirical attention. Accordingly, in the current study, we investigated how occupational background, together with decision-making framing (e.g., variations in decision domain, context, presentation of risk, and utility ratios), influence participants' risk preferences for decision options with equivalent expected utility. Our novel findings indicate that risk preferences may vary among individuals from different occupational backgrounds. As such, when the task was framed in gain terms, participants who mostly deal with health/safety-related risks on a day-to-day basis ( occupations) were predominantly risk-averse (avoiding risky options), while participants who mostly deal with financial/social risks ( occupations) were prone to risk-seeking behavior (avoiding certain options). Specifically, in "high-risk" occupations, participants' pattern of choices changed from risk-averse in gain scenarios to risk-seeking in loss scenarios. However, the opposite pattern of risk preferences was found in participants with "white-collar" occupations. Our findings indicate that decision-makers' occupational backgrounds influence risk preferences under some circumstances.
在过去十年中，行为科学领域，尤其是心理学和经济学领域的一些研究，探讨了个体风险行为的复杂性及其潜在因素。此前的大多数研究都考察了各种社会经济、认知、生物和心理因素对人类决策的影响，然而，决策者的风险偏好与职业背景之间的关系并未得到太多实证关注。因此，在当前的研究中，我们调查了职业背景以及决策框架（例如，决策领域、背景、风险呈现和效用比率的变化）如何影响参与者对具有同等预期效用的决策选项的风险偏好。我们的新发现表明，来自不同职业背景的个体的风险偏好可能会有所不同。具体而言，当任务以收益的形式构建时，日常主要处理与健康/安全相关风险的参与者（职业）主要表现为风险厌恶（避免风险选项），而主要处理金融/社会风险的参与者（职业）则倾向于风险寻求行为（避免确定选项）。具体来说，在“高风险”职业中，参与者的选择模式从收益情景下的风险厌恶转变为损失情景下的风险寻求。然而，在“白领”职业的参与者中发现了相反的风险偏好模式。我们的研究结果表明，在某些情况下，决策者的职业背景会影响风险偏好。
