Religious Priming, Risk-Taking, and the Activation of Religiosity

In this paper, I conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi with Protestant pastors and farmers to examine how religiosity influences risk-taking behaviour using an explicit religious prime– the presence of a Bible. Participants play three lotteries: a standard lottery, one with a Bible present, and a third where they choose whether to include the Bible. My results show that the effect of the Bible on pastors’ betting behaviour is statistically insignificant, while farmers increase their bets relative to the standard lottery by 4.75 percentage points when the Bible is imposed and by 7.59 percentage points when they voluntarily choose to include it. By correlating changes in betting behaviour with religiosity measures, I provide empirical evidence that the religious prime selectively activates specific aspects of religiosity — religious faith and religious identity. This suggests that when religious faith and identity become more salient, farmers take more risks. My findings contribute to the understanding of how increased religious salience affects the risk-taking behaviour of smallholder farmers. They also show that different primes can activate distinct cognitive and behavioural responses in economic decision-making.