“金钱-环境”复合收益的风险决策:价值取向的影响

Taking money and environment together:The role of relative values in composite risky decision-making

现实中的环境决策,往往要在多个由"金钱-环境"复合而成的结果间做选择。人们如何对异质复合结果进行评估与选择,是决策研究面临的新课题。本研究着重考察个体金钱取向和环境取向的相对强度对复合收益风险决策的影响。结果表明,无论是采用自陈量表(实验1)或内隐联想测验(实验2)来测量价值取向,还是采用混词造句任务(实验3)来启动价值取向,均发现价值取向相对强度对复合风险决策有显著影响。(1)相比于金钱取向占优的个体,环境取向占优的个体在进行复合风险决策时更偏好环境风险较小的复合选项;(2)在复合选项等价匹配任务中,环境取向占优的个体会赋予复合选项中的环境收益以更高权重,倾向于用更多的金钱收益来弥补环境收益的风险折扣;(3)在复合收益风险概率匹配任务中,环境取向占优的个体更倾向于为获取倍增的环境收益而承担更大的复合收益风险。作为对复合结果风险决策的首次探索,本研究初步回答了不同价值取向的个体在金钱-环境复合风险决策中更倾向于规避什么风险、拿什么冒险以及为什么冒险等问题,为今后进一步开展复合决策研究打下了理论和方法基础。

Risk is one of the core attributes of environmental decision-making. Most often, the alternatives of environmental risky decision-making would involve monetary outcomes as well as environmental outcomes, triggering the tradeoff between profit seeking and environmental protection. Expected-value theory, Prospect theory, Equate-to-differentiate theory, as well as models such as MAUT, DRIFT, ITCH, however, solely focus on the decision-making process of homogeneous outcomes. Thus, it＇s a novel topic in behavioral decision research to explore how individuals evaluate, integrate and make choices on composite outcomes. Given that the conflict between environmental and monetary values is one of the primary causes that leads to the antagonism of profit seeking and environment protection, the present research focused on the effect of relative values on risky decision-making of composite money-environment gains. A total of 417 college students--specifically, 206 students participated in Experiment 1, 64 in Experiment 2, and 147 in Experiment 3 -- participated in the study. In Experiment 1, New Ecological Paradigm Scale （NEP） and Money Ethics Scale （MES） were used to measure individual＇s environmental and monetary values respectively. We inspected the effect of relative values, which was represented by the d-value of MES and NEP, on individuals＇ preference in the composite risky choice task in which two options had the same expected values based on pilot study. Experiment 2 examined the role of outcome weights in the influence of relative values on composite risky decision-making. Implicit association test was used to identify relative money-oriented and environment-oriented individuals. Experiment 3 used a scrambled-words task to prime one＇s monetary or environmental value orientation and explored its effect on weights allocation and composite risk preference. The results indicated that individuals with different relative values will differ in value evaluation and risk preference on the composite gains. The effect remained consistent whenever the relative values was measured by scale, implicit association test, or primed by scrambled-words task. Environment-oriented individuals tended to assign larger weights to the environmental gain in the composite than did money-oriented ones. In addition, compared to money-oriented individuals, environment-oriented individuals were more inclined to take risk in money for the sake of ensuring environmental benefits and more risk-seeking for an extra environmental improvement in the composite outcomes. Overall, the results suggested that activating and shaping decision makers＇ relative values could change their risk preference in decision making of composite money-environment gains and thereby promote proenvironment choices. Furthermore, this research initiated a new decision frame in which the options expanded from homogeneous sequential outcomes to heterogeneous composite outcomes.