システム情報系　社会工学域

　　平成29年度　　　　ファカルティ・セミナー

日　時　　　　：　2018年1月10日（水）16：30−18：00

場　所　　　　：　3F1200-L

講演者　　　　：　横尾 英史 氏（国立環境研究所）

司会者　　　　：　大久保 正勝

演　題　　　　：　Subjective beliefs on health risks: Evidence from cooking fuel choices and illness in India

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Abstract

Preferences and beliefs are two potential sources of variation in attitudes toward risks. However, previous studies mainly focus on risk preferences assuming that subjective beliefs correspond to objective probabilities. In this paper, we quantitatively study subjective beliefs on health risks in a field setting in the developing world. Our context is illness related to indoor air pollution caused by cooking. Using survey data collected from 565 respondents in rural India, we estimate an impact of fuel usage on minor physical symptoms to examine objective risk of illness, and elicit subjective beliefs by using an interactive method with visual aids. We compare estimated risks and elicited subjective beliefs to examine systematic misperceptions. The comparison shows that beliefs are low and have considerable variations compared to estimated risks suggesting that a large number of respondents misperceive the risk. Furthermore, we find the association between the degree of misperception and observables such as age and income. These results suggest a possible source of probability distortions.