The role of disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity in describing financial risk aversion among financial decision-makers

PurposeUsing data obtained from 525 individuals who were surveyed during early spring 2020, this study addressed three aims: (1) to ascertain the degree to which disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity are related; (2) to identify who is most likely to exhibit patterns of disappointment aversion; and (3) to determine to what extent the combination of disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity is associated with financial risk aversion.Design/methodology/approachSeveral analytic methods were used in this study. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the measures examined in this study. Correlation, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression techniques were used to estimate associations between and among the variables of interest in this study.FindingsA negative relationship between disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity was noted, which is counter to conventional thinking. It is traditionally thought that those who establish high expectations will experience the greatest disappointment when choice outcomes fall below expectations. In this study, it was determined that when a financial decision-maker consistently establishes high outcome expectations and results fall below expectations, the financial decision-maker feels less disappointment. More precisely, those who consistently establish high expectations tend to be more disappointment tolerant than others.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper provides evidence that categories of disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity are associated with financial risk aversion and certain demographic characteristics.Practical implicationsThis paper adds support for assertions made in the International Journal of Bank Marketing (IJBM) that it is important for financial service professionals and bankers to manage customer expectations to reduce disappointment with products and services. This paper shows that combinations of disappointment aversion and expectation proclivity are related to the financial risk aversion of customers.Social implicationsFindings from this paper indicate that a commonly used heuristic that decision-makers should reduce expectations to avoid disappointment may not be accurate or particularly useful in the context of financial decision-making.Originality/valueFindings from this study add to the existing body of literature by showing that aversion to disappointment and the establishment of expectations, while distinct concepts, are interrelated.

Disappointment Aversion, Term Structure, and Predictability Puzzles in Bond Markets

We solve a dynamic equilibrium model with generalized disappointment-aversion preferences and continuous state-endowment dynamics. We apply the framework to the term structure of interest rates and show that the model generates an upward-sloping term structure of nominal interest rates and a downward-sloping term structure of real interest rates and that it accounts for the failure of the expectations hypothesis. The key ingredients are preferences with disappointment aversion, preference for early resolution of uncertainty, and an endowment economy with three state variables: time-varying macroeconomic uncertainty, time-varying expected inflation, and inflation uncertainty. This paper was accepted by Karl Diether, finance.

Revealed Preferences over Risk and Uncertainty

We develop a nonparametric method, called Generalized Restriction of Infinite Domains (GRID), for testing the consistency of budgetary choice data with models of choice under risk and under uncertainty. Our test can allow for risk-loving and elation-seeking attitudes, or it can require risk aversion. It can also be used to calculate, via Afriat’s efficiency index, the magnitude of violations from a particular model. We evaluate the performance of various models under risk (expected utility, disappointment aversion, rank-dependent utility, and stochastically monotone utility) using data collected from several recent portfolio choice experiments. (JEL C14, D11, D12, D81)

An explicit representation for disappointment aversion and other betweenness preferences

One of the most well known models of non‐expected utility is Gul's (1991) model of disappointment aversion. This model, however, is defined implicitly, as the solution to a functional equation; its explicit utility representation is unknown, which may limit its applicability. We show that an explicit representation can be easily constructed, using solely the components of the implicit representation. We also provide a more general result: an explicit representation for preferences in the betweenness class that also satisfy negative certainty independence (Dillenberger 2010) or its counterpart. We show how our approach gives a simple way to identify the parameters of the representation behaviorally and to study the consequences of disappointment aversion in a variety of applications.