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Category: Project

Description: Understanding whether risk preference represents a stable, coherent trait is central to efforts aimed at explaining, predicting, and preventing risk-related behaviours. We help characterise the nature of the construct by adopting a meta-analytic approach to summarise the temporal stability and convergent validity of over 300 risk preference measures (51 samples, 29 panels, > 500.000 respondents). Our findings reveal significant heterogeneity across and within measure categories (propensity, frequency, behaviour), domains (e.g., investment, occupational, alcohol consumption), and sample characteristics (e.g., age). Specifically, while self-reported propensity and frequency measures of risk preference show a higher degree of stability relative to behavioural measures, these patterns are moderated by domain and age. Crucially, an analysis of convergent validity reveals a low agreement across measures, questioning the idea that they capture the same underlying trait. Our results raise concerns about the coherence and measurement of the risk preference construct.