Prosocial Risk Taking

This study is aimed at studying the concept of prosocial risk taking from an economic point of view. Although the concept itself is relatively new, it has many real-life examples and practical implications, from heroic deeds of Chernobyl accident liquidators to cheating on exams. In the research common ways of measuring prosociality and risk are modified in an attempt to apply them to measuring prosociality in the presence of risk. Graphs are studied in order to reveal any patterns in the individuals’ behaviour. The results has shown that the prosocial individuals’ behaviour in presence of risk cannot be described by a monotonic function as different effects prevail for different values of risk. A model was written with the goal of incorporating prosociality in the presence of risk. It was found that the estimates obtained in the individual risky decision-making can differ from those, on basis of which the individuals act in social context. It can be possible that a measure of risk aversion should be also obtained in a social contest. Another possibility is that in making decisions on PSRT an individual takes into account the benefit of his action to another individual and ignores the cost in form of risk. Further research is needed to distinguish between these two conclusions.