不确定性容忍度对风险偏好的影响及其情景依赖性

The Effects of Tolerance of Uncertainty on Risk Preferences and Its Context-dependency

研究以经营店面为背景设计决策材料,探讨不同任务情景下个体不确定性容忍度对风险偏好的影响。结果发现,不确定性容忍度主效应显著,高容忍度者比低容忍度者更冒险。不确定性容忍度与损益背景交互作用显著:在损失背景下,高容忍度者比低容忍度者更冒险,在获益背景下无此效应。不确定性容忍度与选项描述框架交互作用显著:在积极框架下,高容忍度者比低容忍度者更冒险,在消极框架下无此效应。这表明,不确定性容忍度对风险偏好产生影响,但这种影响会受到损益背景和选项描述框架的调节,具有情景依赖性。

Tolerance of uncertainty（TU） is defined as individual differences in the tendency to react emotionally, cognitively, or behaviorally to uncertain situations. Though TU has been related to a variety of cognitive and emotional constructs, it is still not clearly for us about the behavioral consequences of TU. The purpose of the thesis is to probe into the influences of TU, gain-loss context, framing effects, probability levels on risk preferences. We first hypothesize that TU significantly influenced the risk preference, participants with high TU are more willing to take risks than participants with low TU. Secondly, we hypothesize that the effect of TU may differ depending on task characteristics. 629 undergraduate were divided into two groups according to their scores from the intolerance of uncertainty scale, as groups with high and low TU levels in accordance with the high-low-27-percent group method. Hence, a total of 351 students were included in the study. The experimental data were collected from the low and high TU group over a period of time varying between one and two months after the screening phase ended. The running a small shop scenarios used in the present research were designed to begin with either a gain or a loss context, and to be followed by outcomes with three levels of probabilities（high, median, low） respectively. Therefore, it was a 2（tolerance of uncertainty： high vs. low）×2（gain-loss context： gain vs. loss）×2（outcome framing： positive vs. negative）×3（probabilities： high vs. median vs. low）mixed design with probabilities as the within-participants variable and the other three as between-participants variables, the dependent variable is their risk preference, which they choose in a 6 rank tables according to the ＂standard gambling＂ paradigm. Repeated Measurement ANOVA with gender as covariates were performed to analyze the data. The results were as follows： （1） The main effects of TU were significant, subjects who have low scores on IUS were more willing to take risks than subjects who have high scores on IUS. （2） There was significant interaction between TU and gain-loss context on risk preference, subjects who have low scores on IUS were more willing to take risks than subjects who have high scores on IUS in loss-context but not in gain-context. （3） There was also significant interaction between TU and the framing of options on risk preference, subjects who have low scores on IUS were more willing to take risks than subjects who have high scores on IUS under the positive frame, but not under the negative frame; at the same time, the further analysis of simple effects also show that people with high scores on IUS but not with low scores on IUS are affected by the framing effect. （4） There was no significant interaction between TU and the levels of probability. In conclusion, the result suggested that TU can influence risk preferences and the influence is context-dependent, in which factors like gain-loss context and the framing of options play a role. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.