Double or quits: should money found be risked?

Abstract

This article examines social attitudes towards risk-preference and risk-aversion. First, we briefly discuss the theoretical approach to the analysis of risk-preference and risk-aversion that was developed within rational choice theory. Next, we present an approach to operationalise risk-preference using survey data. Our measurement of attitudes towards risk follows the usual strategy: respondents are asked to choose between a small amount of money they get for sure, and a large but risky amount. Drawing on the theoretical models and earlier empirical research, we formulate hypotheses about the social factors that have an impact on actual decision making in the situations under study. The hypotheses are tested using survey data. The article ends with a brief discussion. The novelty of our paper is that – to the best of our knowledge – neither previous Hungarian nor international research has attempted to examine attitudes towards risk using data from large-scale surveys.