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The impact of the level of responsibility on choices under risk: the role of blame

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gilbert G. Eijkelenboom ,
Ingrid Rohde  and
Alexander Vostroknutov
Gilbert G. Eijkelenboom
Affiliation:
School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Ingrid Rohde
Affiliation:
School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Alexander Vostroknutov*
Affiliation:
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Via delle Regole 101, 38123 Mattarello, TN, Italy
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We use a within-subjects design to study how responsibility for the payoffs of different number of others influences the choices under risk, and how choosing together with another person changes these decisions. After controlling for the regression to the mean, we find a weak effect of responsibility for one other person on risk taking as compared to choosing just for oneself. We, however, do find that the number of others influenced by the choice matters: when it increases from one to three, risk averse subjects choose riskier options and risk loving subjects choose more cautiously, which pushes the choices towards the modal risk preferences in the population. Mutual responsibility makes choices for others shift even more in the same direction. The observed behavior is in accordance with the blame avoidance hypothesis: decision makers with responsibility try to reduce the amount of blame for their choices, which is minimal when the choices for others are consistent with what they would have chosen for themselves.

Keywords

ResponsibilityBlameRisk preferencesChoice in groups

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 794 - 814
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-018-9587-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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