Framing and stakes: A survey study of decisions under uncertainty

Manel Baucells and Cristina Rata
Additional contact information
Cristina Rata: IESE Business School, Postal: Research Division, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN

No D/568, IESE Research Papers from IESE Business School

Abstract: Using a survey study of 261 decisions under uncertainty, we explore the factors that explain risk taking behavior and those that predict the importance of a decision. We also examine the relationship between framing and status quo, the similarity between monetary and non-monetary decisions, as well as the similarities and differences among our three subject groups (Undergraduates, MBAs and Executives). We find that framing, domain, and probability of success have a strong influence on the probability of taking risks. Other factors, such as group, importance of a decision, and whether the consequences are monetary or not, do not seem to influence risk attitudes. Our analysis of importance of a decision highlights the frequency with which a decision is taken as a key variable. Our results suggest that the cumulative effects of unimportant and frequent decisions are greater than the cumulative effects of very important and infrequent decisions.

Keywords: Decision making under uncertainty; Framing; Importance and frequency of decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2004-09-21
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0568-E.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0568

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IESE Research Papers from IESE Business School IESE Business School, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Noelia Romero ().