Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Comprehension in risk elicitation tasks is crucial, as otherwise the results are rather noisy than reliable. One prominent risk-elicitation tool, the Holt and Laury task (HL-task), is particularly prone to a noisy outcome - indicated by high inconsistency levels - when used among low-literacy subjects. Yet, it is unclear what drives inconsistencies. In this note we investigate the HL-task inconsistency levels of 247 smallholder farmers from rural Cambodia. Cognitive skills, measured through Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM), are a statistically significant determinant of inconsistency levels. A second step in the analysis reveals that cognitive skills are a statistically significant explanation for inconsistency levels for men, but not for women. Our results suggest that researchers should conduct a comprehensive pre-test when aiming at using abstract risk-elicitation methods among low-numeracy subjects in the field.