Risk perception is unlikely to drive underuse of social information in lab studies

Despite the theorized benefits of social learning, participants in controlled experiments consistently copy less than is optimal - instead over-relying on individual exploration. This may be due to learners' perceptions of risk associated with social versus asocial information. To test this hypothesis, I recruited a large (N = 240) sample of UK adults to participate in an online experiment ('The Farming Game'), in which they could maximize payoffs by accurately choosing which of two crops to grow over variable-yet-learnable environments. To measure participants' risk-profiles, this study mirrored lottery-choice experiments widely used in behavioral economics. Participants were asked to choose between a 'risky lottery' and a 'sure gain' option on the basis of information they previously learned. How the information was learned varied across conditions (whether they were asked to copy socially or explore individually). However, the riskiness of the lottery choices themselves was held constant for all, such that any observed differences in risk-taking should speak to participants' underlying priors regarding that source of information. Contrary to this study's predictions, people assigned to social information were not significantly more (or less) risk averse than those assigned to asocial information. This suggests underuse of social information may not be due to how risky it is perceived.