Howard Kunreuther
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 300455 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Howard Kunreuther |
| NOMBRES | Howard |
| APELLIDO | Kunreuther |
| FIRMA | KUNREUTHER H |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Pennsylvania |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 45 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 199 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1967 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Precommitment in Stochastic Versus Deterministic Social Dilemmas
Many real‐world social dilemmas require interdependent people to repeatedly protect against a large loss that has a low probability of occurring. Examples include protecting against disease outbreak (e.g., COVID‐19), terrorism (shared border security), or extreme weather events (from climate change). Decisions on whether to invest in protection may be made period by period (e.g., month by month), or investment may be precommitted in advance for a…
All by myself? Testing descriptive social norm-nudges to increase flood preparedness among homeowners
Nudges based on social norms (norm-nudges) can be compelling behavioral interventions compared with traditional interventions such as taxes and regulations, but they do not work in all circumstances. We tested two empirical norm-nudge frames in an online experiment on taking measures for flood preparedness with large samples of homeowners ( N = 1805) in two European countries, to evaluate the possible interactions between norm-nudge effectiveness…
Planet or pocketbook? Environmental motives complement financial motives for energy efficiency across the political spectrum in the United States
Leadership Dispatches
Through an account of Chile's remarkable recovery after a catastrophic earthquake in 2010, this book unearths a set of leadership principles that are relevant to anyone at the helm of public or private organizations facing risk. Leadership Dispatches is at once the story of nation that shifted into high gear after a major disaster, and an instructive guide for leaders coping with increasingly widespread and menacing crises
Responses to losses in high-deductible health insurance
There have been few empirical studies on how consumers respond to their loss experience over time when choosing between high- and low-deductible health insurance plans. To address this question, we designed a ten-period web-based experiment to explore how subjects respond to the presence or absence of illness-related costs in a given period when making their future health insurance choices when they are explicitly informed that future premiums or…
Improving the National Flood Insurance Program
This paper highlights factors that need to be considered for improving the National Flood Insurance Program in the USA to address the biases that lead individuals to not protect themselves against low-probability, high-consequence flood events. The errors that individuals exhibit in deciding not to purchase insurance or invest in loss reduction measures prior to a disaster can be traced to the effects of six biases: myopia, amnesia, optimism, ine…
Assessing community resilience
This paper introduces an holistic approach to assessing community resilience in the United States with respect to hazards by inventorying a community's strengths: Financial, Human, Natural, Physical, Political and Social, as sources of capital (6 Capitals, or 6Cs) and characterizing four properties of its resilience (4R) (robustness, resourcefulness, redundancy and rapidity). We link the 6C-4R framework to the National Flood Insurance Program's (…
Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas
Previous findings on punishment have focused on deterministic environments in which the outcomes are known with certainty. In this article, we conduct experiments to investigate how punishment affects cooperation in stochastic social dilemmas where each person can decide whether to cooperate, when the outcomes of alternative strategies are specified probabilistically. Two types of punishment mechanisms are studied: (1) an unrestricted punishment …
Cautious Defection
Individuals often make decisions that affect groups, yet the propensities of group representatives are not as well understood than those of independent decision makers or deliberating groups. We ask how responsibility for group payoffs—in the absence of group deliberation—affects the choice. The experiment utilizes the Interdependent Security Dilemma paradigm. In its deterministic version, the game is identical to a finitely repeated Prisoner's D…
Troubled Waters
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)-an
The Role of Subsidies in Coordination Games with Interconnected Risk
Can subsidies promote Pareto‐optimum coordination? We found that partially subsidizing the cooperative actions for two out of six players in a laboratory coordination game usually produced better coordination and higher total social welfare with both deterministic and stochastic payoffs. Not only were the subsidized players more likely to cooperate (choose the Pareto‐optimum action), but the unsubsidized players increased their expectations on ho…
Political ideology affects energy-efficiency attitudes and choices
This research demonstrates how promoting the environment can negatively affect adoption of energy efficiency in the United States because of the political polarization surrounding environmental issues. Study 1 demonstrated that more politically conservative individuals were less in favor of investment in energy-efficient technology than were those who were more politically liberal. This finding was driven primarily by the lessened psychological v…
Disaster Resilience
Risk, Media and Stigma
Protecting Against Low‐Probability Disasters
ABTRACT We carry out a large monetary stakes insurance experiment with very small probabilities of losses and ambiguous as well as exact probabilities. Many individuals do not want to pay anything for insurance whether the probabilities are given exactly or are ambiguous. Many others, however, are willing to pay surprisingly large amounts. With ambiguity, the percentage of those paying nothing is smaller and the willingness to pay (WTP) of the ot…
At War with the Weather
Innovative, long-term strategies for reducing vulnerability to large-scale natural disasters and for providing financial support for disaster victims. The United States and other nations are facing large-scale risks at an accelerating rhythm. In 2005, three major hurricanes—Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast within a six-week period. The damage caused by these storms led to insurance reimbursements and federal disast…
Reducing Losses from Catastrophic Risks through Long-Term Insurance and Mitigation
that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive
Disaster Mitigation and Insurance
Hurricane Katrina illustrates the natural disaster syndrome. Prior to a disaster, individuals in hazard-prone regions do not voluntarily adopt cost-effective loss reduction measures. The federal government then comes to the rescue with disaster assistance even if it claimed it had no intention of doing so prior to the event. There are a number of reasons why individuals do not protect themselves prior to a disaster. They underestimate the likelih…
IDS Models of Airline Security
This article applies an earlier analysis of interdependent security issues to a general class of problems involving discrete interdependent exposure to terrorist risks. Any agent’s incentive to adopt risk-reducing measures depends on the actions of others because of the negative externalities created by not investing in protection. Using airline security as an illustrative example, the authors show that any individual airline will be less likely …
Policy
This paper examines the role that insurance has played in dealing with terrorism before and after September 11, 2001, by focusing on the distinctive challenges associated with terrorism as a catastrophic risk. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA) was passed by the U.S. Congress in November 2002, establishing a national terrorism insurance program that provides up to $100 billion commercial coverage with a specific but temporary risk-sh…
Paying the Price
A carer provides support to an elderly, ill or disabled person (often a relative) who cannot manage alone without assistance. The unpaid work of such carers saves the taxpayer an estimated 34 billion pounds annually in health and social services. Yet many carers are living in poverty, excluded from social activities and paid employment, often feeling isolated and unrecognised in their role. This book draws on new research to examine the impact of…
Dealing with risk
Mitigating disaster losses through insurance
The role of compensation in siting hazardous facilities
Empirical evidence indicates that compensation can prove effective in gaining public acceptance for siting facilities on the benign end of the spectrum (e.g., landfills, prisons), but is subject to serious limitations when it comes to facilities that the public regards as particularly risky or of questionable legitimacy such as nuclear waste repositories. These facilities require creative mitigation measures such as independent inspections of the…
Science, Values, and Risk
In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the probability and consequences of the occurrence of an event. This article conceptualizes risk as a game, in which the rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem. This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical approaches to risk management often fail wit…
Decision Processes for Low Probability Events
This survey describes the impact of judgements and choices about low probability, high consequence events on the policymaking process. Empirical evidence indicates that normative models of choice, such as expected utility theory, are inadequate descriptions of individual choices. The ambiguity of low probabilities also affects decisions in ways that are not normative. Further, people exhibit biases in judgments about risks and probabilities. Thes…
Disaster Mitigation and Insurance
Hurricane Katrina illustrates the natural disaster syndrome. Prior to a disaster, individuals in hazard-prone regions do not voluntarily adopt cost-effective loss reduction measures. The federal government then comes to the rescue with disaster assistance even if it claimed it had no intention of doing so prior to the event. There are a number of reasons why individuals do not protect themselves prior to a disaster. They underestimate the likelih…
Cotton, Corn and Risk in the Nineteenth Century
Why Did “Uncle Remus” exhort the post-bellum South to reduce its cotton-growing in favor of corn? His complaint was prompted in the immediate sense by the low cotton prices of the early 1890's, but such comments reflected a continuing discontent over the region's abandonment of self-sufficiency in foods after the Civil War. The ratio of cotton output to com was probably at an antebellum peak in 1860, but this ratio had been easily exceeded by 188…
Science, Values, and Risk
In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the probability and consequences of the occurrence of an event. This article conceptualizes risk as a game, in which the rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem. This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical approaches to risk management often fail wit…
IDS Models of Airline Security
This article applies an earlier analysis of interdependent security issues to a general class of problems involving discrete interdependent exposure to terrorist risks. Any agent’s incentive to adopt risk-reducing measures depends on the actions of others because of the negative externalities created by not investing in protection. Using airline security as an illustrative example, the authors show that any individual airline will be less likely …
How the Scope and Method of Public Funding Affect Willingness to Pay for Public Goods
This article examines the sensitivity of survey measures of willingness to pay for public goods. Visitors to a science museum in San Francisco were asked to provide estimates of their willingness to pay for saving seabirds from oil spills and for teaching English to immigrants under various experimental conditions. Willingness to pay was substantially reduced by a seemingly innocuous reminder about how many individuals would be affected by a tax …
Troubled Waters
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)-an
Cotton, corn, and risk in the nineteenth century
The Changing Societal Consequences of Risks from Natural Hazards
In recent years, the federal government has pro vided substantial relief to victims of natural disasters. A pri mary reason for this assistance is that many of the individuals suffering damage have not protected themselves with insur ance. Standard coverage, normally required as a condition for a mortgage, offers protection against fire, wind, and hail damage; flood and earthquake policies can be purchased sep arately, and most residents of hazar…
Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas
Previous findings on punishment have focused on deterministic environments in which the outcomes are known with certainty. In this article, we conduct experiments to investigate how punishment affects cooperation in stochastic social dilemmas where each person can decide whether to cooperate, when the outcomes of alternative strategies are specified probabilistically. Two types of punishment mechanisms are studied: (1) an unrestricted punishment …
Risk, Media and Stigma
Policy
This paper examines the role that insurance has played in dealing with terrorism before and after September 11, 2001, by focusing on the distinctive challenges associated with terrorism as a catastrophic risk. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA) was passed by the U.S. Congress in November 2002, establishing a national terrorism insurance program that provides up to $100 billion commercial coverage with a specific but temporary risk-sh…
The peculiar economics of disaster
Cautious Defection
Individuals often make decisions that affect groups, yet the propensities of group representatives are not as well understood than those of independent decision makers or deliberating groups. We ask how responsibility for group payoffs—in the absence of group deliberation—affects the choice. The experiment utilizes the Interdependent Security Dilemma paradigm. In its deterministic version, the game is identical to a finitely repeated Prisoner's D…
Warning and Response to the Mount St. Helen's Eruption
Risk Analysis and Decision Processes
During the course of the writing of this book, a cultural perspective on societal decisions involving risks to the public was developed at IIASA. In the Postscript this cultural approach is described and used to explain many of the anomalies found in the four case studies. This perspective both builds upon and, to some extent, challenges the framework developed in this book to describe political decision processes
Decision A nalysis for Complex Systems
All by myself? Testing descriptive social norm-nudges to increase flood preparedness among homeowners
Nudges based on social norms (norm-nudges) can be compelling behavioral interventions compared with traditional interventions such as taxes and regulations, but they do not work in all circumstances. We tested two empirical norm-nudge frames in an online experiment on taking measures for flood preparedness with large samples of homeowners ( N = 1805) in two European countries, to evaluate the possible interactions between norm-nudge effectiveness…
Assessing community resilience
This paper introduces an holistic approach to assessing community resilience in the United States with respect to hazards by inventorying a community's strengths: Financial, Human, Natural, Physical, Political and Social, as sources of capital (6 Capitals, or 6Cs) and characterizing four properties of its resilience (4R) (robustness, resourcefulness, redundancy and rapidity). We link the 6C-4R framework to the National Flood Insurance Program's (…
Protecting Against Low‐Probability Disasters
ABTRACT We carry out a large monetary stakes insurance experiment with very small probabilities of losses and ambiguous as well as exact probabilities. Many individuals do not want to pay anything for insurance whether the probabilities are given exactly or are ambiguous. Many others, however, are willing to pay surprisingly large amounts. With ambiguity, the percentage of those paying nothing is smaller and the willingness to pay (WTP) of the ot…
Reducing Losses from Catastrophic Risks through Long-Term Insurance and Mitigation
that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive
Insurance versus Disaster Relief
This paper is concerned with ways that policy makers can plan ahead with respect to dealing with consequences of natural hazards. Despite the rash of movies highlighting dangers of earthquakes, floods, and tornados, local policy makers and community leaders view natural disasters as low priority items until after an event occurs.1 Should the damage be severe there is great concern with getting the community back on its feet and preventing disaste…
The peculiar economics of disaster
Cotton, Corn and Risk in the Nineteenth Century
Why Did “Uncle Remus” exhort the post-bellum South to reduce its cotton-growing in favor of corn? His complaint was prompted in the immediate sense by the low cotton prices of the early 1890's, but such comments reflected a continuing discontent over the region's abandonment of self-sufficiency in foods after the Civil War. The ratio of cotton output to com was probably at an antebellum peak in 1860, but this ratio had been easily exceeded by 188…
Cotton, corn, and risk in the nineteenth century
The Changing Societal Consequences of Risks from Natural Hazards
In recent years, the federal government has pro vided substantial relief to victims of natural disasters. A pri mary reason for this assistance is that many of the individuals suffering damage have not protected themselves with insur ance. Standard coverage, normally required as a condition for a mortgage, offers protection against fire, wind, and hail damage; flood and earthquake policies can be purchased sep arately, and most residents of hazar…
Decision A nalysis for Complex Systems
Risikoanalyse und politische Entscheidungsprozesse
Risk Analysis and Decision Processes
During the course of the writing of this book, a cultural perspective on societal decisions involving risks to the public was developed at IIASA. In the Postscript this cultural approach is described and used to explain many of the anomalies found in the four case studies. This perspective both builds upon and, to some extent, challenges the framework developed in this book to describe political decision processes
Public protection against misperceived risks
Insurance versus Disaster Relief
This paper is concerned with ways that policy makers can plan ahead with respect to dealing with consequences of natural hazards. Despite the rash of movies highlighting dangers of earthquakes, floods, and tornados, local policy makers and community leaders view natural disasters as low priority items until after an event occurs.1 Should the damage be severe there is great concern with getting the community back on its feet and preventing disaste…
Dynamics of Technical Controversy. Allan Mazur
Risk Analysis and Decision Processes
Warning and Response to the Mount St. Helen's Eruption
[Roles of Government in a Mixed Economy]
Crisis Management
The Appropriate Scope of Regulation
Decision Processes for Low Probability Events
This survey describes the impact of judgements and choices about low probability, high consequence events on the policymaking process. Empirical evidence indicates that normative models of choice, such as expected utility theory, are inadequate descriptions of individual choices. The ambiguity of low probabilities also affects decisions in ways that are not normative. Further, people exhibit biases in judgments about risks and probabilities. Thes…
Integrating Insurance and Risk Management for Hazardous Wastes
Site Unseen
Framing, probability distortions, and insurance decisions
How the Scope and Method of Public Funding Affect Willingness to Pay for Public Goods
This article examines the sensitivity of survey measures of willingness to pay for public goods. Visitors to a science museum in San Francisco were asked to provide estimates of their willingness to pay for saving seabirds from oil spills and for teaching English to immigrants under various experimental conditions. Willingness to pay was substantially reduced by a seemingly innocuous reminder about how many individuals would be affected by a tax …
Mitigating disaster losses through insurance
The role of compensation in siting hazardous facilities
Empirical evidence indicates that compensation can prove effective in gaining public acceptance for siting facilities on the benign end of the spectrum (e.g., landfills, prisons), but is subject to serious limitations when it comes to facilities that the public regards as particularly risky or of questionable legitimacy such as nuclear waste repositories. These facilities require creative mitigation measures such as independent inspections of the…
Science, Values, and Risk
In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the probability and consequences of the occurrence of an event. This article conceptualizes risk as a game, in which the rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem. This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical approaches to risk management often fail wit…
Dealing with risk
Paying the Price
A carer provides support to an elderly, ill or disabled person (often a relative) who cannot manage alone without assistance. The unpaid work of such carers saves the taxpayer an estimated 34 billion pounds annually in health and social services. Yet many carers are living in poverty, excluded from social activities and paid employment, often feeling isolated and unrecognised in their role. This book draws on new research to examine the impact of…
Economics (25 obras) · Business (24 obras) · Political science (21 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · Psychology (14 obras) · Actuarial science (13 obras) · Geography (13 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (10 obras) · Disaster Management and Resilience (10 obras)