Risk preferences and personality traits in children and adolescents

Marco Piovesan; Helene Willadsen

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011

Risk preferences and personality traits in children and adolescents

Marco Piovesan^*, Helene Willadsen

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

Abstract

We elicit both risk preferences and personality traits of 340 children aged 7–16 and enrolled in Danish schools: we elicit risk preferences using a modified–and simplified–version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task, and to measure personality traits we use the HEXACO (parent-report) questionnaire. Our results show that, on average, children are risk averse, become more risk taking with age, and that girls are, on average, more risk averse than boys. On the contrary, personality traits are stable across ages, except for a slight decrease in Openness to Experience. Personality and risk preferences are not correlated either when looking at raw correlations or regressions, including controls. The results suggest that risk preferences and personality traits are complementary measures of individual heterogeneity of behavior.

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	186
Pages (from-to)	523-532
Number of pages	10
ISSN	0167-2681
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011
Publication status	Published - Jun 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comments.

Funding Information:
We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comment

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021

Keywords

Behavioral economics
Experiment with children
Personality
Risk preferences

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011

Cite this

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title = "Risk preferences and personality traits in children and adolescents",

abstract = "We elicit both risk preferences and personality traits of 340 children aged 7–16 and enrolled in Danish schools: we elicit risk preferences using a modified–and simplified–version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task, and to measure personality traits we use the HEXACO (parent-report) questionnaire. Our results show that, on average, children are risk averse, become more risk taking with age, and that girls are, on average, more risk averse than boys. On the contrary, personality traits are stable across ages, except for a slight decrease in Openness to Experience. Personality and risk preferences are not correlated either when looking at raw correlations or regressions, including controls. The results suggest that risk preferences and personality traits are complementary measures of individual heterogeneity of behavior.",

keywords = "Behavioral economics, Experiment with children, Personality, Risk preferences",

author = "Marco Piovesan and Helene Willadsen",

note = "Funding Information: We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comments. Funding Information: We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comment Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021",

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doi = "10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011",

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pages = "523--532",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Risk preferences and personality traits in children and adolescents

AU - Piovesan, Marco

AU - Willadsen, Helene

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comments. Funding Information: We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for generous financial support (Project: 108579). The activities of CEBI are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. We are grateful to the many colleagues and student assistants have helped us in planning and running this experiment. We thank Ingo Zettler, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin and the participants of the Social and Biological Roots of Economics Workshop at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy for constructive comment Publisher Copyright: © 2021

PY - 2021/6

Y1 - 2021/6

N2 - We elicit both risk preferences and personality traits of 340 children aged 7–16 and enrolled in Danish schools: we elicit risk preferences using a modified–and simplified–version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task, and to measure personality traits we use the HEXACO (parent-report) questionnaire. Our results show that, on average, children are risk averse, become more risk taking with age, and that girls are, on average, more risk averse than boys. On the contrary, personality traits are stable across ages, except for a slight decrease in Openness to Experience. Personality and risk preferences are not correlated either when looking at raw correlations or regressions, including controls. The results suggest that risk preferences and personality traits are complementary measures of individual heterogeneity of behavior.

AB - We elicit both risk preferences and personality traits of 340 children aged 7–16 and enrolled in Danish schools: we elicit risk preferences using a modified–and simplified–version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task, and to measure personality traits we use the HEXACO (parent-report) questionnaire. Our results show that, on average, children are risk averse, become more risk taking with age, and that girls are, on average, more risk averse than boys. On the contrary, personality traits are stable across ages, except for a slight decrease in Openness to Experience. Personality and risk preferences are not correlated either when looking at raw correlations or regressions, including controls. The results suggest that risk preferences and personality traits are complementary measures of individual heterogeneity of behavior.

KW - Behavioral economics

KW - Experiment with children

KW - Personality

KW - Risk preferences

U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011

DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.011

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85105255184

VL - 186

SP - 523

EP - 532

JO - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

JF - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

SN - 0167-2681

ER -