  Understanding how individuals, including students, make decisions involving
risk is a fundamental aspect of behavioral research. Despite the ubiquity of
risk in various aspects of life, limited empirical work has explored student
risk-taking behavior in computing education. This study aims to partially
replicate prior research on risk-taking behavior in software engineers while
focusing on students, shedding light on the factors that affect their
risk-taking choices. In our work, students were presented with a hypothetical
scenario related to meeting a course project deadline, where they had to choose
between a risky option and a safer alternative. We examined several factors
that might influence these choices, including the framing of the decision (as a
potential gain or loss), students' enjoyment of programming, perceived
difficulty of programming, and their academic performance in the course. Our
findings reveal intriguing insights into student risk-taking behavior. First,
similar to software engineers in prior work, the framing of the decision
significantly impacted the choices students made, with the loss framing leading
to a higher likelihood for risky choices. Surprisingly, students displayed a
greater inclination towards risk-taking compared to their professional
counterparts in prior research. Furthermore, we observed that students' prior
academic performance in the course and their enjoyment of programming had a
subtle influence on their risk-taking tendencies, with better-performing
students and those who enjoyed programming being marginally more prone to
taking risks. Notably, we did not find statistically significant correlations
between perceived difficulty of programming and risk-taking behavior among
students.
