Study On The Risk Decision Propensity Under Different Frames

Framing effect occurs when logically equivalent redescriptions of objects or outcomes lead to different behavior, and such effects have traditionally been seen as irrational. Such effects have been studied as an important issue in risky decision making, since from Kahneman and Tversky's studies. There are two main theories of explaining framing effect—Prospect Theory and "equate-to-differentiate" theory .And many studies explored influence factors of framing effect, such as context, individual traits, and so on. In this study, we explored the influence of the relationship between task and personal interest, decision-maker's role orientation, and homogeneity of sufferers on framing effect, and tried to get the mechanism of framing effect.Two experiments are conducted in this study. In experiment 1, we choused typical Asian disease problem, to study that whether alternative formulation frames and the relationship between task and decision-maker could result in different risk choices. In experiment 2,we choused two risky decision tasks based on the prototype Asian disease problem, to study whether the role orientation, homogeneity of sufferers could result in different risk choices. Combining with the two experiment results, our results are as follows:(1) Alternative formulation frames (negative or positive frames) have strong influence on subjects' risk choice in typical Asia disease problem. Different with previous studies, subjects tend to choose not 'reverse' of decision propensity, but so-called risky project (B).