Heterogeneity in Risk-Taking During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From the UK Lockdown

In two pre-registered online studies during the COVID-19 pandemic and early 2020 lockdown (one of which with a UK representative sample) we elicit risk-tolerance for 1,254 residents using four most widely applied risk-taking tasks in behavioral economics psychology. Specifically, participants completed incentive-compatible Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) Binswanger-Eckel-Grossman (BEG) multiple lotteries task, as well Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) self-reported questions used German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) study. addition, sample answered range about COVID-19-related risky behaviors selected from UCL Social Survey ICL-YouGov survey on behaviors. Consistently pre-COVID-19 times, find that risk tolerance (i) was higher men than women (ii) decreased age. Undocumented some evidence healthier displaying significantly measures. We no systematic nor robust patterns association between our Moreover, support so-called “risk compensation” hypothesis. If anything, it appears who took greater real-life COVID-19-relevant (e.g., isolating or taking precautions) also exhibited experimental