Research Award for Sebastian O. Schneider

The “Deutsche Stiftung Glücksspielforschung” (German Foundation on Gambling Research, DSGF) has awarded the 2026 German Young Researcher Award on Gambling Research to Sebastian O. Schneider. The prize, endowed with €30,000, was presented on 13 April 2026, during the scientific symposium “Aspects of Human Risk Behavior” at the Literaturhaus Munich.

Schneider received the award for his joint work with Matthias Sutter, “Risk Preferences and Field Behavior: The Relevance of Higher-Order Risk Preferences”, published in 2026 in the American Economic Review, one of the five leading journals in economics.

The study investigates the relevance of higher-order risk preferences for decision-making outside the laboratory. The authors show that, quite often, standard risk aversion does not matter, but the higher-order preferences such as prudence and temperance do, in particular with regard to health-related behavior and financial decision-making, where they are systematically associated with real-world behavior.

These findings have important implications for the economic modeling of decision-making under risk. They are also directly relevant to the gambling context, particularly for the design of effective prevention and consumer protection measures.