Price risk aversion vs payoff risk aversion: a gender comparison through a laboratory experiment

Purpose This paper explores gender differences in two distinct forms of risk aversion—Payoff Risk Aversion (PaRA) and Price Risk Aversion (PrRA)—in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of how men and women respond to different types of economic uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a laboratory experiment using Multiple-Choice-List (MCL) risk-elicitation tasks based on both Direct Utility Function (DUF) and Indirect Utility Function (IUF) frameworks. These tasks present stochastic payoffs and stochastic prices, respectively. The analysis uses statistical hypothesis testing to compare gender-specific responses across three experimental designs. Findings The key results of the study indicate that women typically exhibit higher degrees of PaRA than men, which is a consistent finding with the mainstream literature. However, remarkably, the results from all the three indirect MCL designs show that women typically exhibit lower degrees of PrRA than men, and this result is robust across different MCL designs. The paper also introduces an “irrationality gap” as the difference between PaRA and PrRA and explores the size of the irrationality gap within either gender group, finding it larger and statistically significant for men, while smaller and statistically insignificant for women. Originality/value This study is the first to distinguish between PaRA and PrRA in a gender comparison, using experimentally validated methods. It provides new behavioral insights into the nature of gender-specific risk preferences and introduces the irrationality gap as a novel concept with implications for understanding financial decision-making and the design of gender-sensitive economic policies.