Direct and indirect effects of pathological gambling on risk attitudes

Abstract

We study individual decision making in a lottery-choice task performed by three different populations: gamblers under psychological treatment (“addicts”), gamblers’ spouses (“victims”), and people who are neither gamblers or gamblers’ spouses (“normals”). We find that addicts are willing to take less risk than normals, but the difference is smaller as a gambler’s time under treatment increases. The large majority of victims report themselves unwilling to take any risk at all. However, addicts in the first year of treatment react more than other addicts to the different values of the risk-return parameter.

Keywords

• risky decision making
• pathological gambling
• attraction
• repulsion to chance