ABSTRACT

Objective

To understand the relationship between the presentation of risk expressions in terms of loss/gain and safety personnel’s evaluation of risk probability in the context of prospect theory.

Background

One of the major topics of behavioral economics is the issue of decision-making under uncertainty, and prospect theory is the most prominent theory in the field. This theory claims that individuals’ perceptions of losses are more severe than their perceptions of gains, and thus, the utility–value function is not symmetrical.

Method

Two studies (N = 39 and N = 49) were performed in which business aviation safety professionals were asked to assess several risk expressions. In each study, subjects were divided into two groups. One group assessed unframed risk events, while the other assessed positively framed ones. Average probability values of each group were compared to each other, in order to understand whether framing caused a shift in risk assessment.

Results

Positively framing the risk expressions caused risk assessors to focus on threats instead of existing measures and to show “risk aversion” for two out of five risks – notably, the two related to human factors.

Conclusion

These results show that prospect theory predictions regarding decision-making under uncertainty may not be limited to financial decisions and can be extended to safety risk assessment.

中文翻译：

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安全风险概率评估中的框架效应：一种前景理论方法

摘要

目的

在前瞻理论的背景下，了解以损失/收益表示的风险表达形式与安全人员对风险概率的评估之间的关系。

背景

行为经济学的主要主题之一是不确定性下的决策问题，而前景理论是该领域最著名的理论。该理论认为，个人对损失的认识要比对收益的认识更为严格，因此，效用价值函数不是对称的。

方法

进行了两项研究（N = 39和N = 49），其中要求公务航空安全专业人员评估几种风险表达。在每个研究中，受试者分为两组。一组评估无框架风险事件，另一组评估正面风险事件。为了比较框架是否引起风险评估的变化，将每个组的平均概率值进行了比较。

结果

对风险表达的积极构架导致风险评估者将重点放在威胁上而不是现有措施上，并对五分之二的风险（尤其是与人为因素有关的两种风险）显示“规避风险”。

结论

这些结果表明，关于不确定性下决策的前景理论预测可能不仅限于财务决策，而且可以扩展到安全风险评估。