The Effects Of Regulatory Focus Of Consumers On Time Preference

In the decision, motivation field Higgins (1997) proposed a new theory--regulatory focus theory.According to the form type, individual's regulatory focus types can be divided into chronic regulatory focus and situational regulatory focus.Besides,it also can be divided into promotion focus and prevention focus by category.There are significant differences between the two types of regulatory focus.In daily life, everyone will face the time of intertemporal consumption decision-making, due to everyone has their own different time preference, some people choose the current consumption, and some people choose to defer consumption. This paper adopts questionnaire investigation and experiment to studied difference s of the consumers who has two different regulatory focus when they face intertemporal consumption decision-making.The result showed that: To the people of chronic regulatory focus, promote focused people are more likely to choose the current consumption than prevention focus individual when they face the intertemporal consumption decision-making, promote focused people are more likely to choose the current consumption.To situational regulatory focus, promote focused people are more likely to choose the current consumption than prevention focus individual when they face the intertemporal consumption decision-making, promote focused people are more likely to choose the current consumption.And self-esteem plays a part in regulating effect in situational regulatory focus.