心理科学进展 2009, Vol. 17, No. 4, 788–794 Advances in Psychological Science 788 行为经济学中的损失规避* 刘 欢1, 2 梁竹苑1 李 纾1 (1中国科学院心理研究所社会与经济行为研究中心,北京 100101) (2中国科学院研究生院,北京 100039) 摘 要 损失规避是指,人们总是强烈倾向于规避损失:一定数额的损失所引起的心理感受,其强烈程度约相当于两倍数额的获益感受这种强烈的心理与行为倾向广泛存在于风险与非风险领域,在该两个领域中损失规避的研究范式也不同损失规避常见于经济和消费等领域,可用于解释行为决策中有悖于规范化理论的诸多现象,如禀赋效应、现状偏差、股权溢价之迷和赢者的诅咒等然而,损失规避的机制研究还存在许多尚未解决的问题,如损失规避的本质以及适用条件今后的研究不仅要注重认知角度和情感依恋,还要结合认知过程来研究损失规避的性质和内在机制,以期帮助人们认识、预测及干预由损失规避造成的经济损失和非理性决策 关键词 损失规避;价值函数;禀赋效应 分类号 B849:C93 1 损失规避的基本概念 早在 1759 年,现代经济学之父 Adam Smith 在其《道德情操论》中描述了一个有趣的现象:状况由好变坏时,人们所承受的痛苦要比由坏变好时所体验到的欢乐多,并认为这种现象具有普遍性。
在200 多年后的 1979 年, Kahneman 和 Tversky (1979)用实验证实了这一观点:损失和获益期望值相等的赌博游戏(赢得 50 美元或输掉 50 美元的概率均为50%)对被试来说并不具有吸引力,被试普遍不愿意参加赌博游戏(参加的比例低于随机水平 50%) ,而且涉及的金钱数值越大,不愿参加赌博游戏的被试比例就越大据此,Kahneman 和 Tversky 认为,损失和获益的心理效用并不相同,客观上的损失比等量获益产生的心理效用更大,并把这种现象命名为损失规避(loss aversion) 预期理论(prospect theory)是有关风险决策的描述性理论该理论由价值函数和权重函数构成:在价值函数上,获益为凹函数,损失为凸函数,且损失函数比获益函数更加陡峭;权重函数并不是随概率线性变化,小概率往往被高估,而中高概率往往被低估(Kanneman y, 1-p) ,其中 x、y 分别为获益或损失值,且 x×y < 0,P 表示概率 研究者操纵赌博游戏中收益损失值的大小,将愿意参加赌博游戏的被试比例为因变量以Kahneman 和 Tversky(1979)的实验材料为例,给被试呈现 P($50, 50%; $-50, 50%)的赌博游戏,即有一半的机会赢得 50 美元,有一半的机会输掉 50美元,询问被试是否愿意参加该赌博游戏,结果发现愿意参加该游戏的被试比例低于随机水平,而且随着 x,y 增大,愿意参加游戏的被试比例降低。
实验结果证明了,等量的损失和获益产生的心理效用并不相同,前者大于后者;损失规避的程度与赌博游戏中损失绝对值的大小成正比 2.2 非风险领域 损失规避之所以被认为是一种无处不在的现象,部分归功于 Thaler 将其引入了非风险领域,用以解释禀赋效应禀赋效应指个人对自己所拥有物品的评价价值要比没有拥有该物品时高(Thaler, 1980) 典型禀赋效应实验以商品交易为原型,将被试随机分为两组,研究者要求得到物品的一组被试给出愿意出让该物品的最低价格 WTA(willingness to accept) ,并要求得到金钱的另一组被试给出愿意购买该物品的最高价格 WTP(willingness to pay) 为了保证被试在实验中表达自己真实的意愿,研究者们常使用 BDM(Becker, DeGroot, Sayman Dhar Putler, 1992; Ulrich Novemsky LIANG Zhu-Yuan1; LI Shu1 (1 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China) (2 Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China) Abstract::Loss aversion, which meaned that people were, on average, roughly twice as sensitive to losses as to gains, demonstrated that people have a strong psychological and behavioral tendency to avoid losses than the same amounts of gains in risky and riskless decision. We first introduced the definition of loss aversion briefly from theoretic and behavioral prospective, and the different research paradigms used in risky and riskless fields. Loss aversion was accepted as both a description and an explanation of the phenomenon, it was widely used in economic filed to explain abnormal phenomenon, such as endowment effect, status quo bias, equity premium puzzle, the winner’s curse, and so on. Researchers did not only pay attention to the mediators of loss aversion, which can be divided into two categories: emotional attachment and cognitive perspective, but also focused on the mechanism of loss aversion. However, there were some problems with loss aversion which should be addressed in future research, such as the relationship with endowment effect and the difference from risk aversion. As loss aversion was an extensive-existed phenomenon, an associative understanding of the mechanism of loss aversion from emotional attachment, cognitive perspective and cognitive process would assist individual to recognize, predict and intervene the economic loss and irrational decisions caused by loss aversion. Key words: loss aversion; value function; endowment effect 。