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Cited by 2,977

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

Regret in Decision Making under Uncertainty

Bell, David E.·1982·Operations Research
DOI 10.1287/opre.30.5.961
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Abstract

Evidence exists that people do not always make decisions involving uncertain monetary rewards as if they were maximizing expected utility of final assets. Explanations for this behavior postulate that the cognitive demands of consistency to such a theory are too great. However, situations exist in which more than mental shortcuts are involved and these anomalies raise questions about expected utility theory as a guide to behavior. This paper explores the possibility that expected utility theory appears to fail because the single outcome descriptor—money—is not sufficient. After making a decision under uncertainty, a person may discover, on learning the relevant outcomes, that another alternative would have been preferable. This knowledge may impart a sense of loss, or regret. The decision maker who is prepared to tradeoff financial return in order to avoid regret will exhibit some of the behavioral paradoxes of decision theory. By explicitly incorporating regret, expected utility theory not only becomes a better descriptive predictor but also may become a more convincing guide for prescribing behavior to decision makers.

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Metadata

Authors
Bell, D. E.
Venue
Operations Research
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Published
1982-10
Volume
30
Issue
5
Pages
961-981
ISSN
  • 0030-364X (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-5463
DOI
10.1287/opre.30.5.961
OpenAlex
W2145964516
Cited by
2,977
References
0
FWCI
8.87
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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