The Ambiguous And Framing Information As Factors Affecting Ambiguity Aversion

In decision under uncertainty, people used to prefer options involving clear probabilities(risk) to options involving vague probabilities(ambiguity), this phenomenon was first found by Daniel Ellsberg (1961). Previous studies tend to focus on the degree of the ambiguity, without considering the frame as a influencing factor, this study designed two experiments to explore the ambiguity aversion behavior while the ambiguity information (high and low) and the natrue of the frame(positive, negative) changed, in order to further investigate the formation mechanism of ambiguity aversion.Two experiments were conducted in this study:In Experiment1,2(frame conditions:positive frame, negative frame)x2(ambiguity conditions:a high degree of ambiguity, a low degree of ambiguity) mixed design were carried out to explore the ambiguity aversion behavior while the probability information is ambiguity.In Experiment2,2(frame conditions:positive frame, negative frame)x2(ambiguity conditions:a high degree of ambiguity, a low degree of ambiguity) mixed design were carried out to explore the ambiguity aversion behavior while the Profit or loss amount is ambiguity.Hypotheses:the frame of the problem may affect the ambiguous attitudes, the ambiguity may interact with the frame. Different nature of the frame will give rise to different ambiguity aversion behavior trends; under positive frame condition, the ambiguity aversion behavior increase as the degree of ambiguity increased, while the ambiguity aversion behavior decreased at the same condition under negative frame condition.Across the above two experiments, the results conform our prediction:under positive framing condition, the ambiguity aversion behavior increased with the increasing ambiguity, while the ambiguity aversion behavior decreased under negative framing condition. Implications are discussed.