Elicited Risk and Time Preferences: The Role of Demographics, Cognition, and Interviewers
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: I find survey-elicited risk and time preferences to be systematically related to respondent demographics, cognition, and interviewer characteristics, in the Indonesian Family Life Survey. Men are less risk averse than women, older respondents are more impatient, wealthier respondents are less risk averse and less impatient, better educated adults are less impatient, and adults with better cognitive capacity proxied by episodic memory are less impatient. The elicitation modules identify individuals with nonstandard preferences, in that they choose a dominated payoff. Measures of cognitive capacity are associated with the likelihood of having nonstandard preferences in expected ways. Respondents with better episodic memory are less likely to be nonstandard. Better educated respondents are less likely to be nonstandard, in some cases. I find strong evidence that interviewer characteristics affect elicited preferences. In particular, where interviewers and respondents do not share a daily spoken language, respondents are more likely to show nonstandard preferences. This effect is found only in interviews conducted in languages other than the national language. However, estimates of the other explanatory variables are not changed by the inclusion of interviewer characteristics.
Source: University of Notre Dame
DOI: 10.7274/r06d5qxp
Author: Ng, James
Institution: University of Southern California
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2182930341