I think you shouldn't just focus on the monetary outcome.
If you play a game for 4$ (winning 1Mio.$ with a probability of 1/500'000) whiches fair value would be 2$. So playing this game is rational if the thrill and the dream of beeing rich (as the non-monetary benefit of the game) is valued more than 2$ (a coup of coffee), which is very likely.
I can think of two biases that might cause an irrational decision for lotteries:
People tend to overweight small probabilities, so they calculate with a too large expected value.
Another problem might be, that people a... (read more)
I think you shouldn't just focus on the monetary outcome.
If you play a game for 4$ (winning 1Mio.$ with a probability of 1/500'000) whiches fair value would be 2$. So playing this game is rational if the thrill and the dream of beeing rich (as the non-monetary benefit of the game) is valued more than 2$ (a coup of coffee), which is very likely.
I can think of two biases that might cause an irrational decision for lotteries:
People tend to overweight small probabilities, so they calculate with a too large expected value.
Another problem might be, that people a... (read more)