The Effect Of Time Description On Intertemporal Choice

Many daily decisions involve evaluation of present and future benefits or costs. People often make judgements or choices on outcomes occurring at one time in future. In these decisions, outcomes occur at near future or far future, which are called intertemporal choice(Loewenstein, 1988a). In short, intertemporal choice refers to a choice between options whose consequences occur at different points in time. Intertemporal choice have drawn the researchers' attentions and have made much progress.The present study reviewed past researches related to intertemporal choice, mainly including time discounting, other dimensions of intertemporal choice except time discounting(expectation, self-control, representation), elicitation model in intertemporal choice, hypotheses in intertemporal discounting experiments, time perspective, and so on.In many situations, researchers have to decide to how to describe time to their respondents when they study intertemporal choice.In past researches, different experimenter chose different time description and gave little consideration to the influence of time description on the outcomes in experiment. That is, they ignored the effect of time "frames" Read et.al.have studied the "date-delay effect" in intertemporal choice. Based on their study ,we made a further study on the effect of time description on intertemporal choice.This research, employing the simulated experiment method, studied the effect of time description on intertemporal choice. We got the following results:(1) In gain, under different eciletation models, time description has influence on subjects' intertemporal choice. Subjects' subjective discounting rates under different time description are different. Subjective discounting rate under "date" description is lower than that under other time description. Just like Read et.al did.(2) In loss, under different eciletation models, time description has influence on subjects' intertemporal choice. Subjects' subjective discounting rates under different time description are different. Subjective discounting rate under "date" description is lower than that under other time description.(3) The interaction of gain-loss, time description and eciletation model on intertemporal choice is not significant. The interaction of gain-loss and time description on intertemporal choice is significant. The interaction of gain-loss and eciletation model on intertemporal choice is significant. The interaction of time description and eciletation model on intertemporal choice is not significant.(4) Time estimation are different under different time description, and time estimation cannot completely explain the effect of time description on intertemporal choice.(5) For subjects with one time perspective , the intertemporal choice under different time description did not show significant difference.