<p>This paper examines how risk preferences differ over goods and in-kind monetary rewards, such as gift cards. I conduct an experiment in which control subjects allocate self-selected Amazon.com goods over uncertain states, whereas treated subjects allocate temporally-restricted Amazon.com credit instead. Under perfect information, I prove allocations would be theoretically identical between these groups without assumptions on utility form or risk preferences. In practice, subjects demonstrate considerable differences, with credit allocations 4 times more likely to be riskless. Using an information treatment where subjects browse Amazon.com for an extended time, I find no evidence that price or product uncertainty explains these differences. An additional experiment demonstrates these differences do not exist in a risk-free environment requiring real effort in exchange for credit or goods, further indicating the differences are not driven by uncertainty regarding the utility value of monetary credit.</p>

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Risky choices over goods

  • Patrick DeJarnette

摘要

This paper examines how risk preferences differ over goods and in-kind monetary rewards, such as gift cards. I conduct an experiment in which control subjects allocate self-selected Amazon.com goods over uncertain states, whereas treated subjects allocate temporally-restricted Amazon.com credit instead. Under perfect information, I prove allocations would be theoretically identical between these groups without assumptions on utility form or risk preferences. In practice, subjects demonstrate considerable differences, with credit allocations 4 times more likely to be riskless. Using an information treatment where subjects browse Amazon.com for an extended time, I find no evidence that price or product uncertainty explains these differences. An additional experiment demonstrates these differences do not exist in a risk-free environment requiring real effort in exchange for credit or goods, further indicating the differences are not driven by uncertainty regarding the utility value of monetary credit.