Isolating the role of anonymity in representative risk taking

Anonymity consistently influences behavior across economic environments such as prisoner’s dilemma, dictator and public goods games. However, its role in representative decision making – where individuals make choices under social responsibility – remains unexplored. The authors address this gap with a laboratory experiment testing whether reduced anonymity affects representative risk taking. Decision makers choose between a guaranteed payoff and a higher expected value risky lottery, with outcomes applied to both themselves and a randomly assigned partner. Using a 2 × 2 design, the authors manipulate mutual visual identification and partner presence during instructions and decisions. Reducing anonymity leads to more conservative behavior overall. Partner presence significantly increases risk aversion even without identification, while visual identification alone has a weaker effect. The combination also reduces risk taking, though not more than either component individually. This study provides the first experimental evidence on the role of anonymity in representative risk taking.