Risk compensation

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In risk management, risk compensation is the balancing of an existing risk with an opposing risk in the context of risk management . The transportation and industrial psychology knows the risk compensation as "Peltzman effect", named after Samuel Peltzman .

General

Risk compensation refers to the balancing effect when opposing risks are combined, so that ideally one risk exactly balances the other. In the context of risk compensation, decisions are made or transactions are concluded which, in the best case scenario, are correlated with a correlation coefficient of negatively .

species

On the one hand, risk compensation can take place in the company itself if there are opposing risks. An exporter , for example, the part of the sales of goods in a particular state exported and simultaneously through the procurement of raw materials imported from the same state, at least the currency risk offset ( auto insurance ). On the other hand, the inherent risks in stocks ( inventory , receivables on the assets side , liabilities on the liabilities side of the balance sheet ) can be partially offset by hedging .

Finance

In the case of financial risks , financial instruments are combined with one another in such a way that future events offset each other in terms of results and do not result in a loss . Hans Büschgen defined this risk compensation as the targeted combination of the risk resulting from one financial instrument with another financial instrument that has an opposing, negatively correlated counteraction. This happens in the economy at hedging risk-compensating an already received exposure . Therefore, the Finance hedges or "hedging" is also regarded as synonyms of risk compensation.

If credit institutions are used by non-banks for this risk compensation , the latter operate a vertical risk transformation .

Peltzman effect

In 1975, Sam Peltzman published a study that proved that legal norms to improve road safety did not significantly reduce the number of accident victims. Measures to increase road safety or occupational safety could be completely or partially ineffective or even turned into their opposite because the road users or employees felt safer. Because of this, they sometimes behave more riskily than before or are exposed to more risky actions by others because a possible accident or work- related accident is assessed as less likely or less severe. The psychological processes often take place unconsciously .

The safety devices built into the cars (such as ABS , seat belts ) led, according to Peltzman, to a reduction in the death and injury rate among vehicle occupants, but at the same time to an increase in the risk of accidents for pedestrians; Peltzman sees this as confirmation of his assumption of risk compensation (also called risk homeostasis here ). However, this shifts the risk to the benefit of the vehicle occupants and to the detriment of the pedestrians. However, pedestrians adapt to this increased risk, so that aggregated across all road users, a lower accident rate could result. Rather, here is a moral hazard ( English moral hazard ) before.

Also in sports with a high risk of injury ( extreme sports , risk athletes ) and in everyday behavior risk compensation was observed.

Examples

Traffic safety
  • After the introduction of the anti-lock braking system (ABS) in motor vehicles with undisputed objective advantages, the number of accidents among ABS users has not decreased and afterwards even increased. Only later, when the systems were widespread and received less attention, was a Swedish study able to demonstrate a statistical gain in safety on snow, but not on asphalt.
  • The feared risk compensation is argued against compulsory helmets for cyclists. As a study showed, helmet-wearing cyclists, for example, are overtaken by drivers at a shorter distance. However, a new analysis of the same data could not prove this effect. After the introduction of mandatory bicycle helmets in Australia in 1991, the number of injuries did not decrease, although many cyclists switched to motor vehicles, so the risk for the remaining cyclists increased.
  • In the case of driver assistance systems in cars and trucks that have driver status detection, such systems can increase the willingness of the drivers, e.g. B. to continue driving if you are tired or have other driving difficulties.
  • The speed limit was temporarily lifted in Montana . Fewer accidents occurred during this period and the number of accidents increased again with reintroduction.
Occupational safety

For woodworkers in Finland, after the introduction of safety boots, gloves, helmets and goggles, injuries to eyes, head, hands and feet decreased. In contrast, the number of injuries to unprotected parts of the body increased because the workers worked faster and less carefully.

sport and freetime

In some alpine regions, helmets are now compulsory on ski slopes . Even without helmets being compulsory, a dangerous trend is emerging that instead of attending a ski course to improve skiing technique, the helmet is chosen as the simpler alternative: the proportion of adults participating fell from over 50 to 20 percent. With the number of accidents unchanged and a helmet wearing rate of one third in the 2008/2009 winter season in Austria, half of the injured wore a helmet.

See also

  • Moral hazard : more frivolous behavior as soon as a (insured) community steps in in the event of damage
  • Moral licensing : describes the psychological phenomenon that people without feeling guilty can do a bad deed if they have previously done a good deed.

literature

  • Jochen Paulus: No risk, no fun? Bild der Wissenschaft 07/2007, cit. in Wissenschaft.de , June 19, 2007.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl-Christian Freidank (ed.), Vahlens Großes Auditing-Lexikon , 2007, p. 1196
  2. ↑ Frank Spellmann, Overall Risk Measurement of Banks and Companies , 2002, p. 33
  3. ↑ Michael Göttgens, Compensation of interest rate and currency risks in the bank balance sheet , 1997, p. 1
  4. ↑ Hans Büschgen, Z instermingeschäft , 1988, p. 86
  5. ↑ Michael Göttgens, Compensation of interest rate and currency risks in the bank balance sheet , 1997, p. 64, FN 362
  6. ^ Sam Peltzman: The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation . In: Journal of Political Economy . 83, No. 4, August 1975, pp. 677-726.
  7. ^ Adam T. Pope, Robert D. Tollison: "Rubbin 'is racin": evidence of the Peltzman effect from NASCAR . In: Public Choice March 2010 . Pp. 507-513. 2009. doi : 10.1007 / s11127-009-9548-2 . Retrieved April 15, 2014.
  8. ^ The Peltzman Effect: Do Safety Regulations Increase Unsafe Behavior? . In: Journal of Safety, Health and Environmental Research .
  9. ↑ Thomas Asche, Das Sicherheitsbehavior von Konsumenten , 1990, p. 224
  10. ↑ Man seeks danger. In: Der Spiegel , September 27, 2007.
  11. ↑ Leonard Evans: Antilock brake systems and risk of different types of crashes in traffic. ESV Conference 1998, Vol. 1, pp. 445-461
  12. ↑ B. Biehl / M Aschenbrenner / G Wurm, Influence of risk compensation on the effect of traffic safety measures using the example of ABS. Accident and Safety Research Road Traffic No. 63, Cologne 1987.
  13. ↑ Anders Kullgren / Claes Tingvall / Brian Fildes, The effectiveness of ABS in real life accidents. ESV Conference 1994, paper 94-S4-O-07.
  14. ↑ Ian Walker: Drivers overtaking bicyclists: Objective data on the effects of riding position, helmet use, vehicle type and apparent gender . Accident Analysis and Prevention, German-language summary on SPIEGEL-Online
  15. ↑ Bernd Sluka: Critical comments on Walker's investigation of overtaking distances. (No longer available online.) Fahrradzukunft 4/2007, November 16, 2007, archived from the original on November 20, 2007 ; Retrieved November 19, 2007 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fahrradzukunft.de
  16. ↑ Jake Olivier, Scott R. Walter: Bicycle Helmet Wearing Is Not Associated with Close Motor Vehicle Passing: A Re-Analysis of Walker, 2007 . In: PLoS ONE . tape 8 , no. 9 , 25 September 2013, ISSN  1932-6203 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0075424 , PMID 24086528 , PMC 3783373 (free full text).
  17. ↑ DL Robinson: Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. In: Accident; analysis and prevention. Volume 28, Number 4, July 1996, pp. 463-475, PMID 8870773 .
  18. ↑ Markus Maurer / Christoph Stiller: Driver assistance systems with machine perception: Technologies, applications, trends and potential. Berlin: Springer, 2009
  19. ↑ Chad Dornsife: Fatal accidents double on Montana's Interstates. National Motorists Association, Waunakee Wisconsin, 2001.
  20. ↑ Jochen Paulus, Bild der Wissenschaft , July 2007
  21. ↑ Alpine Frenzy. In: Die Zeit , January 9, 2009.