In sickness but not in wealth: field evidence on patients’ risk preferences in the financial and health domain

We present results from a hypothetical framed field experiment assessing whether risk preferences significantly differ across the health and financial domains when they are elicited through the same multiple price list paired-lottery method. We consider a sample of 300 patients attending outpatient clinics in a university hospital in Athens, during the Greek financial crisis. Risk preferences in finance are elicited using paired-lottery questions with hypothetical payments. The questions are adapted to the health domain by framing the lotteries as risky treatments in hypothetical healthcare scenarios. Using Maximum Likelihood methods, we estimate the degree of risk aversion, allowing for the estimates to be dependent on domain and individual characteristics. The subjects in our sample, who were exposed to both health and financial distress, tend to be less risk averse in the financial than in the health domain.