Ambiguity seeking as a result of the status quo bias

Mercè Roca, Robin Hogarth () and A. John Maule

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Several factors affect attitudes toward ambiguity. What happens, however, when people are asked to exchange an ambiguous alternative in their possession for an unambiguous one? We present three experiments in which individuals preferred to retain the former. This status quo bias emerged both within- and between-subjects, with and without incentives, with different outcome distributions, and with endowments determined by both the experimenter and the participants themselves. Findings emphasize the need to account for the frames of reference under which evaluations of probabilistic information take place as well as modifications that should be incorporated into descriptive models of decision making.

Keywords: Ambiguity; risk; status quo bias; decision making; uncertainty; Leex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09, Revised 2006-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/882.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ambiguity Seeking as a Result of the Status Quo Bias (2015)
Journal Article: Ambiguity seeking as a result of the status quo bias (2006)
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:upf:upfgen:882

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).