This paper examines how risk preferences differ over goods and in-kind monetary rewards, such as gift cards. I conduct an experiment in which control subjects allocate self-selected Amazon.com goods over uncertain states, whereas treated subjects allocate temporally-restricted Amazon.com credit instead. Under perfect information, I prove allocations would be theoretically identical between these groups without assumptions on utility form or risk preferences. In practice, subjects demonstrate considerable differences, with credit allocations 4 times more likely to be riskless. Using an information treatment where subjects browse Amazon.com for an extended time, I find no evidence that price or product uncertainty explains these differences. An additional experiment demonstrates these differences do not exist in a risk-free environment requiring real effort in exchange for credit or goods, further indicating the differences are not driven by uncertainty regarding the utility value of monetary credit.
Patrick DeJarnette (Thu,) studied this question.