TY - JOUR
T1 - Subjective risk belief function in the field
T2 - Evidence from cooking fuel choices and health in India
AU - Yokoo, Hide Fumi
AU - Arimura, Toshi H.
AU - Chattopadhyay, Mriduchhanda
AU - Katayama, Hajime
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 16K13364); and the Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University .
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 16K13364); and the Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University.We would like to thank Andrew Foster, three anonymous referees, Takeshi Aida, Francisco Alpizar, Takashi Kurosaki, Subhrendu Pattanayak, Masayuki Yagasaki, and the participants in seminars at GRIPS, Hitotsubashi University, Keio University, Kobe University, Osaka University, and the University of Tsukuba, as well as conference participants at EfD 2018, JEA (Spring) 2018 and WCERE 2018 for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank Global Climate Change, Jadavpur University, for its infrastructural assistance with our field survey. Additionally, we would like to thank Tomohiro Suzuki for the excellent research assistance. Special thanks to Mari Sakudo for providing comments in the early stages of this project. Toshi Arimura and Hajime Katayama appreciate the financial support of JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 16K13364). This research was also supported by the Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University. There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - We investigate the accuracy of the perceptions of health risks in India. The context of our study is the risk of developing physical symptoms related to household air pollution caused by cooking. Using field data collected from 588 respondents in 17 villages in West Bengal, we regress the probability of symptoms on fuel choices to predict respondent-specific health risk changes. The estimated risks, which we treat as objective risks, are then compared with the corresponding subjective probabilistic beliefs, which are elicited by an interactive method with visual aids. Our results show that, on average, the respondents slightly underestimate the change in risk when switching from cooking with firewood to cooking with liquefied petroleum gas, even though their beliefs are qualitatively correct. The results further show that risk misperception is associated only with religion among individuals’ observed characteristics, suggesting that their unobserved characteristics play a substantial role in risk misperception.
AB - We investigate the accuracy of the perceptions of health risks in India. The context of our study is the risk of developing physical symptoms related to household air pollution caused by cooking. Using field data collected from 588 respondents in 17 villages in West Bengal, we regress the probability of symptoms on fuel choices to predict respondent-specific health risk changes. The estimated risks, which we treat as objective risks, are then compared with the corresponding subjective probabilistic beliefs, which are elicited by an interactive method with visual aids. Our results show that, on average, the respondents slightly underestimate the change in risk when switching from cooking with firewood to cooking with liquefied petroleum gas, even though their beliefs are qualitatively correct. The results further show that risk misperception is associated only with religion among individuals’ observed characteristics, suggesting that their unobserved characteristics play a substantial role in risk misperception.
KW - Belief
KW - Cooking fuel choice
KW - Health risk
KW - India
KW - Risk misperception
KW - Subjective probabilistic expectation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103000
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103000
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85145597623
SN - 0304-3878
VL - 161
JO - Journal of Development of Economics
JF - Journal of Development of Economics
M1 - 103000
ER -
