Prudence and Prevention – Empirical Evidence
研究了审慎（三阶风险厌恶）是否影响个体的预防行为，发现高风险群体（60岁以上或慢性病患者）中审慎者接种流感疫苗的比例更低。
Theoretical papers show that optimal prevention decisions in the sense of self-protection (i.e., primary prevention) depend not only on the level of (second-order) risk aversion but also on higher-order risk preferences such as prudence (third-order risk aversion). We study empirically whether these theoretical results hold and whether prudent individuals show less preventive (self-protection) effort than non-prudent individuals. We use a unique representative dataset that combines data on higher-order risk preferences and various measures of observed real-world preventive behavior. We find that prudent individuals in the high risk group (above the age of 60 or chronically ill) indeed invest less in self-protection as measured by influenza vaccination. This does not hold for younger and healthy individuals for whom influenza vaccination rates are low in general.