Risk-taking in times of crisis

Guenther, Benno (2023) Risk-taking in times of crisis. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The impact of crises as a source of background risk may have profound impact on risk-taking across contexts. This thesis investigates risk-taking within the context of various types of background risks and crises, with specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. While the first chapter serves as an introduction to the thesis, the second chapter summarises existing findings on risk-taking patterns during the COVID-19 era. It sets the foundation for the thesis by highlighting the importance of understanding risk-taking in crisis situations and introducing relevant concepts. Chapter 3 presents the outcome of two studies conducted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein risk tolerance was assessed for 1,254 UK residents using four well-established risk-taking tasks. Additionally, one of the studies explored participants' responses to questions concerning real-world COVID-19-related risky behaviours. The subsequent chapter introduces a new scale, the Pandemic-DOSPERT (PDOSPERT), adapted from the original DOSPERT scale, to better predict real-world risk-taking behaviour in a pandemic context. This scale enhances our ability to gauge risk-taking in the face of the ongoing pandemic. In the next chapter fluctuations in risk-taking behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of the day of the week are examined, shedding light on potential patterns and dynamics. The final chapter summarises the findings of a study experimentally investigating the influence of different types of background risks, such as the threat of WWIII, another pandemic, AI-related risks, cost of living crisis, and climate crises, on foreground risk-taking. Overall, the research reveals several noteworthy insights. Firstly, during the UK lockdown, risk tolerance was found to be higher in men than in women and decreased with age. No substantial evidence supports the "risk compensation" hypothesis, and there appear to be no consistent patterns of association between COVID-19 risky behaviours and four standard risk-taking measures. Secondly, the new PDOSPERT scale emerges as a significant improvement over the original DOSPERT in predicting pandemic-related risk-taking behaviour, especially the health and safety subscale which demonstrates strong association with pandemic-related risk behaviours. Finally, compared to a control condition with no background risk, there is evidence for significantly reduced risk tolerance as measured by the PDOSPERT and the SOEP under a pandemic situation as well as for a number of DOSPERT and PDOSPERT subscales across conditions, with varying directions.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Benno Guenther
Library of Congress subject classification:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Sets:	Departments > Psychological and Behavioural Science
Supervisor:	Galizzi, Matteo M. and Sanders, Jet
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4618

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