Towards a more precise decision framework

The terms negative utility of gambling and risk aversion conflate three things:

(i)	Disutility from the mere act of taking a chance: i.e. negative effects that would not exist if there were no risk or uncertainty, effects which include serious business considerations such as the availability of loans — exemplified in von Neumann and Morgenstern's famous 1947 Appendix;
(ii)	Diminishing marginal utility of money: — exemplified in Bernoulli and Cramer's expected utility procedure; and
(iii)	A preference for safety: — exemplified in the rank dependent utility models of Allais, Lopes, Quiggin and Yaari.

Factor (iii) has not been previously distinguished from (i). Factor (i) is regularly either confused with (ii) or ignored as elusive and unimportant.