Understanding and Improving Protective Decision Making

地震学家预测，未来30年内，伊斯坦布尔地区极有可能发生强烈地震。这一预测引起了媒体的广泛关注，并提出了如何通过保护措施减少潜在损失的挑战。个人、官员、工程师和建筑商做出的决定都与这个问题有关。为了这个和许多其他应用，需要更好地理解保护性决策背后的原则。我们调查人们如何决定是否购买保险和/或投资于火灾、盗窃、事故或自然灾害等风险的减少损失的措施。我们研究了不同的风险沟通方式和不同的信息和选择呈现框架的影响；我们还研究了保护性决策如何受到教学模块的影响，这些模块有助于理解概率，并为制定决策提供有用的一般策略。为了评估这些影响，将在美国和土耳其进行受控的实验室实验、实地调查和访谈。

Seismologists have predicted that a severe earthquake in theIstanbul region is highly likely in the next 30 years. Thisforecast has drawn much attention in the media and raiseschallenges as to how potential losses may be reduced byprotective measures. Decisions made by private individuals,by officials, and by engineers and builders are all relevantto this question. The principles underlying protective decisionmaking need to be better understood, for the sake of this andmany other applications.We investigate how people determine whether to purchase insuranceand/or invest in loss-reduction measures against risks from fire, theft,accidents or natural disasters. We examine the effects of differentways in which risks can be communicated and different frames in whichinformation and choices can be presented; we also examine howprotective decisions are affected by instructional modules that aidunderstanding of probability and that suggest useful general strategiesfor framing decisions. To estimate these effects, controlled laboratoryexperiments, field surveys and interviews will be conducted both inthe United States and in Turkey.