Measuring Risk Tolerance Among Japanese Adults and Cross-National Comparison of Its Role in COVID-19 Attitudes

Abstract

Risk propensity and attitudes influence how one responds and behaves in situations with different levels of risk. To date, limited studies have investigated domain-specific risk attitudes and their measurement in Japanese contexts or had direct comparisons between Japanese and other cultural contexts. In Study 1 ( N = 567), we developed a Japanese version of the multi-domain risk tolerance (MDRT) scale applicable to Japanese populations. The scale was further examined in Study 2 ( N = 509). We also tested cross-cultural measurement invariance between the Japanese and a US sample ( N = 495). In addition, we explored cultural differences in the predictive validity of MDRT on the concerns and attitudes relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results demonstrated that MDRT has promising structure validity, reliability, convergent validity, and measurement invariance in the Japanese population. Results also showed that domain-specific risk attitudes as measured by MDRT have similarly important relationships with individuals’ concerns about COVID-19 in many life aspects, and their support for COVID-19 restrictions in both Japanese and US samples.