Risk Taking , Religiosity and Denomination Heterogeneity

In this paper, I have merged the European Social Survey, World Values Survey and Eurostat (European Statistics Information) into SHARE (Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe) by regional geographical cell (NUTS2). By using this specific merged data set, I have evaluated the effect of household level religiosity and regional denomination heterogeneity (Catholic/Protestant ratio) on household risk preference. The finding is as follows : the higher the level of religious belief the lower the risk-taking incentive the households have; however, for regional denomination heterogeneity, the higher the regional Catholic/Protestant ratio, the more popular the local risk-taking incentive prevails.