Children's Risk Appetite And Their Role Separation Under Different Task Frameworks

The present study adopted Levin & Hart (2003), Schlottmann & Tiring’s (2005) research paradigm for young children’s risk decision-making, investigated 296 children’s decision-making characteristics for themselves and others in different tasks in order to explore younger children’s understanding of the concept of frames and risk, risk preference for gains and losses, personal interests and others’ interests and decision making for strangers and close friends. It included two parts, with part one investigating younger children’s risk preference for themselves and strangers, part two investigating younger children’s risk preference for themselves and close friends.The results showed that:(1) Almost all the 5 and 6 years old children could understand the gains task and losses task, but some 4 years old children couldn’t understand the losses task. Among those who could understand the gains and losses task, they were able to fulfill these tasks. (2) The main effect of frames showed significant. In the gains and losses tasks, all the children showed framing effect, with higher risk choices in losses task than that in gains task. (3) The interaction of frames and decision maker’s roles showed significant in the study, with higher risk choices for strangers and close friends than for themselves in the gains task and higher risk choices for themselves than for strangers in the losses task. The difference between risk choices for themselves and close friends was not significant in the losses task.The conclusions we can draw from the present study list as follows:(1) Some 4 years old children are unable to understand the concept of frames, but 5 and 6 years old children are able to understand the concepts of frames and risks, which implies that children’s understanding of the concept of frames becomes mature with age gradually. (2) Children show the framing effect in the risk decision tasks. They are prone to risk choices in the losses task and conservative choices in the gains task. (3) Children make different choices for themselves and others.