The Influence Of Regulatory Focus On Ambiguity Aversion Under Different Decision Frames

The concept of ambiguity aversion,was first proposed by Ellsberg(1961),means that when people make decisions in ambiguity situations,they tend to choose those events with certain probability of occurrence(risk events),rather than those events with uncertain probability(ambiguity events).Since ambiguity aversion was put forward,researchers have done a lot of research on this phenomenon,and found the phenomenon in many fields such as money,risk medicine,life assistance,sales and insurance.Previous studies have focused on the objective factors(probability information,presentation mode,loss-gain situation,decision frame,decision field and so on and the psychological factors(decision maker’s ability,self-esteem,optimism,need for cognitive closure,regulatory focus and so on)that affect ambiguity aversion.Most of the existing researches have studied the influence of various factors such as regulation focus on ambiguity aversion under the same probability and ambiguity degree,which is not consistent with the real situation.In the actual situation,magnitude of probability and ambiguity degree are constantly changing,and the decision-making behavior of the same individual may change under different probability and ambiguity degree.Therefore,this study intends to explore the comprehensive influence of four factors(regulation focus,magnitude of probability,ambiguity degree and decision frame)on ambiguity aversion.In this study,two areas of decision-making tasks(money and life assistance)are proposed to investigate the influence of regulatory focus and decision frame on ambiguity aversion,the moderating effect of probability and ambiguity degree on this effect,and then reveal the internal mechanism of regulatory focus and decision frame on ambiguity aversion,and verify whether this mechanism has consistency in different fields.In two experiments,the task in money decision field and the task in life assistance field are used to systematically explore the influence of regulatory focus and decision frame on ambiguity aversion,and the moderating effect of probability and ambiguity degree on this influence.There are two experiments in this study:Experiment 1 used the variation of Ellsberg jar task and adopted 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus vs.prevention focus)×2(decision frame:gain vs.loss)×3(probability:0.2,0.5,0.8)× 2(ambiguity degree:0.1,0.4)mixed experimental design.Experiment 2 used the variation of Asian disease problem task and adopted 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus vs.prevention focus)×2(decision frame:positive vs.negative)×3(probability:0.2,0.5,0.8)×2(ambiguity degree:0.1,0.4)mixed experimental design.The dependent variable is the degree to which participants prefer risk or ambiguity options.The results and conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The effect of regulatory focus on ambiguity aversion is significant.Individual with promotion focus tend to seek ambiguity,while individual with prevention focus tend to avoid ambiguity.(2)The interaction between regulatory focus and decision frame is significant.In positive frame,there is no difference between individuals with promotion focus and individual with prevention focus;in negative frame,individual with promotion focus prefer to seek ambiguity,while individuals with prevention focus prefer to avoid ambiguity.(3)The influence of regulatory focus on ambiguity aversion is moderated by the probability.Under the condition of low probability and medium probability,there is no difference between individual with promotion focus and individual with prevention focus;under the condition of high probability,individual with promotion focus preference is ambiguity seeking,while individual with prevention focus preference is ambiguity avoiding.(4)The influence of regulatory focus on ambiguity aversion is moderated by the ambiguity degree.Under the condition of low ambiguity degree,individual with promotion focus prefer to seek ambiguity,while individuals with prevention focus prefer to avoid ambiguity;Under the condition of high ambiguity degree,the difference between individual with promotion focus and individual with prevention focus is not significant.(5)The influence of decision frame on ambiguity aversion is moderated by the ambiguity degree.Under the condition of low ambiguity degree,there is no difference between individual’s preference under the positive frame and the negative frame;under the condition of high ambiguity degree,individual’s preference under the positive frame is ambiguity avoiding,while individual’s preference under the negative frame is ambiguity seeking.(6)The interaction effect of regulatory focus and decision frame on ambiguity aversion is moderated by ambiguity degree.Under low ambiguity condition,the interaction between regulatory focus and decision frame is significant;under high ambiguity condition,the interaction between regulatory focus and decision frame is not significant.(7)The interaction effect of regulatory focus and ambiguity degree on ambiguity aversion is moderated by magnitude of probability.Under the condition of low probability and medium probability,the interaction between regulatory focus and ambiguity degree is not significant;while under the condition of high probability,the interaction between regulatory focus and ambiguity degree is marginally significant.