Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Papers,
Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute (VTI)

No 2006:1: Perception of Own Death Risk: An Analysis of Road-Traffic and Overall Mortality Risks

Henrik Andersson () and Petter Lundborg ()
Additional contact information
Henrik Andersson: VTI, Postal: VTI, Transport Economics, P.O. Box 6056, SE-171 06 Solna, Sweden
Petter Lundborg: LUCHE, Postal: LUCHE, P.O. Box 705, SE-220 07 LUND , Sweden

Abstract: Individuals' perception of their own road-traffic and overall mortality risks are examined in this paper. Perceived risk is compared with the objective risk of the respondents' peers, i.e. their own gender and age group, and the results suggest that individuals' risk perception of their own risk is biased. For road-traffic risk we obtain similar results to what have been found previously in the literature, overassessment and underassessment among low- and high-risk groups, respectively. For overall risk we find that all risk groups underestimate their risk. The results also indicate that men's risk bias is larger than women's.

Keywords: Bayesian learning; Overall risk; Peers; Road-traffic risk

JEL-codes: C21; D81; D83; I18

23 pages, March 14, 2006

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Published as
Henrik Andersson and Petter Lundborg, (2007), 'Perception of Own Death Risk: An Analysis of Road-Traffic and Overall Mortality Risks', Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, vol 34, no 1, pages 67-84

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