Take a risk or proceed with caution: Prevention motivation moderates responses to near‐loss events

Abstract

A persistently pressing issue identified in the decision‐making literature is that people not only fail to recognize the risks entailed in a near‐loss event but also subsequently engage in further risk‐taking. We contend in this paper that prevention motivation critically regulates decision‐makers' responses to a near‐loss. Across three studies, we found that high prevention‐focused individuals perceive greater risks in a near‐loss event and are subsequently less likely to take risks, compared with low prevention‐focused individuals. This finding highlights the significance of applying a motivational perspective to studying decision‐making and risk.

Improving the Safety Performance of Construction Workers through Individual Perception and Organizational Collectivity: A Contrastive Research between Mainland China and Hong Kong

“…On the other hand, the perceptions of workplace risks are verified to affect workers’ motivation and willingness to act safely first and then promote their safety behavior [ 12 , 71 ]. Workers with a higher cognitional level related to the safety and risk at work will be highly alert and attentive on finding out what they should do to ensure their personal safety and improve their risk-resistance, thus motivating themselves to obey the safety rules and participate in safety training [ 72 , 73 ].…”

The Nexus between Uncertainty Avoidance Culture and Risk-taking Behaviour in Entrepreneurial Firms’ Decision Making

“…According to Hofstede (1991), there are about six bipolar national culture dimensions: individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, long-term versus short-term orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence versus restraint. Scholars from various fields of studies including management (Gray, Kang, & Yoo, 2013;Lu et al, 2018), entrepreneurship (Watson et al, 2019), tourism (Money & Crotts, 2003), finance (Kanagaretnam, Lim, & Lobo, 2014;Boubakri, Mirzaei, & Samet, 2017;Gaganis et al, 2019), behavioural economics (Paine et al, 2020) and, of course, sociology and psychology, use these national culture dimensions to conduct cross-cultural comparisons and analyse the effect on economic variables. In this paper, the effect of uncertainty avoidance culture on various decision-making levels or scenarios is reviewed and synthesized mainly based on empirical research articles.…”

“…The state of mind of decision-makers includes the affective reaction towards the subject of decision (Moreno, Kida, & Smith 2002;Se, Goldfarb & Barret, 2010), emotional differentiation of feelings (Li & Ashkanasy, 2019;Se, Goldfarb, & Barret, 2010), burnout (Michailidis & Banks, 2016) and boredom (Kiliç, van Tilburg, & Igou, 2020). The level of risk-taking is also determined by the very reason of motivation for decision-making (Paine et al, 2020). In addition to these triggering factors, the expected effects of a decision or area of influence: deciding for oneself or others or with others (Nieboer, 2015;Ertac & Gurdal, 2012;Fullbrun & Luhan, 2017), competition (To et al, 2018) and performance (Singh, 1986), and interruption during decision making (Kupor, Liu, & Amir, 2018) are also found as factors affecting risk-taking tendency.…”

“…Poor performance is related to high risk-taking in organizational decisions and good performance is related to low risk-taking (Singh, 1986;Arping, 2019). As far as motivation is concerned, promotion focus increases risk-taking (To et al, 2018) but prevention focus reduces risk-taking (Paine et al, 2020). It implies that individuals with a high prevention focus perceive greater risk in a near-loss event and are less likely to take the risk (To et al, 2018;Paine et al, 2020).…”

Construal level theory and risky decision making following near‐miss events

“…Despite the widespread impact of near-misses on risky decision making, outside of general risk tendencies (Cui et al, 2017) and prevention focus (Paine et al, 2020), there is little understanding of how cognitive differences between individuals influence their propensity to minimize the risks of future disasters from near-miss events. This study contributes to the burgeoning literature on nearmisses by examining how CLs affect judgments and decisions following near-miss events.…”