The Color of Risk - Risk aversion in children using red as framing

Sammanfattning: Traditional economic theory states that the economic agent is rational and that decisions under risk is governed by probabilities and the resulting payoffs. Modern studies have shown this to be far from how people behave. Recently the focus has turned to colors and their effect on economic choices. This study looks at 6 year old children in Sweden (N=123) and how their risk behavior is influenced by the color red. Using an easily communicable game and randomly assigning the children to playing it on red or green background the risk preference is revealed. The red background is found to decrease the probability of the child acting as a risk seeker with 19.6 p.p. with a p-value of 0.054. The findings could potentially be used to, not only communicate danger to children, but also affect their behavior. The resulting policy implication could lead to large economic gains in terms of decreased societal costs of accidents. Further research is needed in order to test the results in a real world setting.