Abstract
ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to investigate how risk attitudes in medical decisions for others vary across health contexts. A lab experiment was designed to elicit the risk attitudes of 257 medical and nonmedical students by assigning them the role of a physician who must decide between treatments for patients. An interval regression model was used to estimate individual coefficients of relative risk aversion, and an estimation model was used to test for the effect of type of medical decision and experimental design characteristics on elicited risk aversion. We find that (a) risk attitudes vary across different health contexts, but risk aversion prevails in all of them; (b) students enrolled in health-related degrees show a higher degree of risk aversion; and (c) real rewards for third parties (patients) make subjects less risk-averse. The results underline the importance of accounting for attitudes towards risk in medical decision making.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 97–113 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Health Economics |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | S3 |
| Early online date | 29 Dec 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2017 |
Keywords
- risk attitudes
- medical decisions
- risk aversion
- health contexts
- multiple price list format
- medical decisions for others
- laboratory experiment
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health Policy
Documents and Links
- Arrieta, A. et al (2017) Risk attitudes in medical decisions for others: an experimental approach
© 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/