Dr. DONG Wanxin from the Department of Finance has published her first-authored research paper entitled “Morality meets risk: What makes a good excuse for selfishness” in Games and Economic Behavior, a leading international journal in game theory. This paper is co-authored with Dr. ZHENG Jiakun, Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, Aix-Marseille University.

   Prior studies have documented that individuals tend to exhibit fewer prosocial behaviors when they can exploit uncertainty as an excuse. Unlike existing literature which largely examines excuse-driven behaviors in the gain domain, this paper investigates excuse-driven risk-taking behaviors in both the gain and loss domains. Based on laboratory experiments, participants were asked to evaluate risk-related payoffs for themselves and their matched partners in either gain or loss settings, with or without interpersonal trade-offs between self and others.

    Experimental results show that participants display excuse-driven risk-taking behaviors in both gain and loss domains. There exists significant individual heterogeneity in the magnitude of excuse-taking, which is shaped by factors including personal risk preferences, beliefs about others‘risk preferences, and the magnitude of risks. To explain the experimental findings, the paper builds a self-signaling model incorporating self-image concerns. It reveals that excuse-driven risk-taking arises because participants attribute their selfish behaviors to shifts in risk preferences rather than reduced altruism.

    This research expands the research frontier of excuse-driven risk-taking behaviors. It offers a unified theoretical framework for understanding phenomena such as excuse-driven conduct, moral wiggle room and information avoidance, and provides micro-behavioral theoretical evidence for understanding cooperation dilemmas in social governance.

About the Author

    DONG Wanxin is a faculty member of the Department of Finance. Her main research interests cover financial risk management, behavioral experimental economics, and behavioral decision-making theory.

Paper Information

    Dong, Wanxin, and Jiakun Zheng. (2026). Morality meets risk: What makes a good excuse for selfishness. Games and Economic Behavior, 2026, 158, 219-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2026.02.010