Research On Big-Five Personality And Economic Intertemporal Decision Making

Current practices of compensation and motivation design in HumanResource System of industry are mostly based on employees’ responsibilitiesand positions, as well as company’s financial budget. Little attention is paid toemployees’ individual difference of preference. Abundant evidences show thatindividual employees show significant different preference in economicdecision making, especially in intertemporal choices. Customized compensationand motivation design according to employees’ individual difference can havemore effective incentive for employees, while do not cost more budget. It’sbiased to receive employees’ preference of intertemporal choices; thereforeexperimental method is a satisfactory substitute. We conducted an experimentcontaining80subjects that measures people’s preference for intertemporalchoices. Besides, big-five personality scale is used to collect subjects’personality characters. Our results reveal that subjects with higher opennesshave lower hyperbolic discount factors and subjects with higher neuroticismhave higher hyperbolic discount factors. The other three factors of big-fivepersonality do not show significant explanatory power to the hyperbolicdiscount factors. These conclusions are useful for industry to d esign a moreefficient incentive mechanism for employees according to their individualdifference, and moreover, can promote the theoretical research in compensationand motivation design.