Attitudes toward private and collective risk in individual and strategic choice situations

Abstract

Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly known and related to own payoffs only. However, the alternatives faced by a decision maker often involve risk about others' payoffs as well. Motivated by the importance of other-regarding preferences in social interactions, this paper explores idiosyncratic attitudes toward own and others' risk. We elicit risk attitudes in an experiment involving choices with and without strategic interaction. Regardless of the choice situation, the results do not support any relation between risk attitudes and other-regarding concerns.