AGE DIFFERENCES IN RISK TAKING ACROSS DOMAINS: EXAMINING RISK INTENTION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS

Abstract

The general consensus in current literatures of older adults is that they are less risk seeking in engaging risky behaviour compared to young adults. However, majority of these studies mainly focuses on a single domain, which presents a limited view of risk aversion behaviour in older adults. We surveyed two adult age groups ranging in age from 18 to 80 on their risk intentions and various risk motivations of risky behaviours across 5 different domains using the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale. A 2 × 5 mixed-design ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of age on risk intention, with age group as the between-subjects factor and risk intention as the withinsubjects factor. Significant interaction effect of domain and age on risk intention was found, indicating that age difference in risk intention varied between domains. As predicted, the greatest reduction is in recreational risk intention while the least reduction is in financial domain from young to older adults. Our findings revealed that individuals’ risk-taking intentions are consistent with their normative beliefs in the financial and recreational domain for both age groups. We discuss how age differences in risk intention may be explained by various underlying psychological factors.