Elicited Risk and Time Preferences: The Role of Demographics, Cognition, and Interviewers

Abstract

I find survey-elicited risk and time preferences to be systematically related to respondent demographics, cognition, and interviewer characteristics, in the Indonesian Family Life Survey. Men are less risk averse than women, older respondents are more impatient, wealthier respondents are less risk averse and less impatient, better educated adults are less impatient, and adults with better cognitive capacity proxied by episodic memory are less impatient. The elicitation modules identify individuals with nonstandard preferences, in that they choose a dominated payoff. Measures of cognitive capacity are associated with the likelihood of having nonstandard preferences in expected ways. Respondents with better episodic memory are less likely to be nonstandard. Better educated respondents are less likely to be nonstandard, in some cases. I find strong evidence that interviewer characteristics affect elicited preferences. In particular, where interviewers and respondents do not share a daily spoken language, respondents are more likely to show nonstandard preferences. This effect is found only in interviews conducted in languages other than the national language. However, estimates of the other explanatory variables are not changed by the inclusion of interviewer characteristics.

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