I'm picking through the author's paper and I don't buy this conclusion. I have a bone to pick with his evidence: for example, he makes a comparison between "willingness to expend time to drive to obtain an accidentally left behind unused, new-condition notebook (vs. willingness to expend driving
time to obtain a new notebook at no financial cost)". The extent of the former he denotes as WTP-Retain and the latter WTP-Obtain. Even if these two values are equal in a study, that doesn't contradict the principle of loss aversion. In the case where a subject has already left behind his/her notebook, the loss has already happened. How can this measure loss aversion when the loss has already occurred? I think it's good the authors are trying to tease apart action vs inaction from loss/gain but these conclusions don't seem valid to me.
He did that all throughout the linked article too: "People do not rate the pain of losing $10 to be more intense than the pleasure of gaining $10." Okay. That's not loss aversion though.
"People do not report their favorite sports team losing a game will be more impactful than their favorite sports team winning a game." Same.
How to you rate pain like this? There is no metric for pain/pleasure per dollar.
And there are other factors at play. Often the thrill is the dopamine release when you make these decisions — that’s the pain. If you’re intensely interested, losing $500 in Monopoly or scoring a run in baseball may be felt profoundly.
It all depends on context, not the means by which we measure an outcome.
Well the test subject has the option to 'undo' the loss. So the loss can be seen as optional for the purposes of the experiment.
Could we settle the argument by reading the definition of loss aversion to 10 people and asking each person whether the author's experiment measures loss aversion?
