| Mental accounting originates from the concept of psychological accounting, which was put forward by a behavioral economist Richard Thaler in Chicago University. Later in 1984, the notion owned its name by scholar Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. According to Thaler, people divide their windfall gain and regular income into different asset groups. Each group has its own unique operational rules, which conflict with the fungibility principal in conventional economics. For example, the same 100 dollars used to buy lottery and pay house rent are labeled in different asset groups and to some extent, non-transferable. Thaler gave another demonstration, once a couple caught several salmon when go out fishing. However, due to negligence of the airline company, the fish were lost during transportation. So the couples got 300 dollars reimbursement, and they spent 225 for a big meal in fancy restaurant. Was it not the reimbursement but salary, then the luxury spending would not have happened. Thaler explained, although it‘s the same amount of 300 dollars no matter from compensation or wage, but people dispose the money in different manners. The underlying trick is that mental accounting has different structures. In terms of income, money earned from different ways belongs to different asset groups. As to spending, the lost money due to investment failure or careless preserve also brings distinct feelings. Embedded in mind, people will set up special account for particular items, which is separate from daily expenditures. Researchers establish a term "Non-fungibility" to describe thus non-transferable property of mental accounting.Researchers pointed out, the non-fungibility of mental accounting brings many irrational demeanors in daily economic life. In objective reality, money from different sources is all the same which shouldn‘t been attached with emotional labels. Also windfall incomes should not be squandered. However, through careful observation and analysis, we found that mental accounting is not absolutely non-fungibility. Although there are many external factors disturb our decisions, humans are still capable to carry out sophisticated high level cognitive processing. In our experiment, we assume only questionnaire is not enough to depict real world behaviors. Therefore we carry out episodic experimental and situational judgment test to split the continuous of mental accounting, and predict a liner relationship in metal accountings to change over time. Based on this assumption, we conducted Cambridge gambling task(CGT) in two ways: laboratory experiment and situational test, among 884 subjects recruited from a military medical university. Results are shown as follows:1.Study one examined the relationship between windfall gain and regular income in terms of variation with time using experiments. First, we probed the popularity of windfall asset group Then we examined the non-fungibility between the two asset groups through subjects’ risk attitudes in CGT at different time points. Results showed that the windfall asset group is ubiquitous(χ2(1, 88)=6.447, p<0.05). In the first gambling task, the risk index of experimental group is higher than control group(F(1, 60)=13.482, p<0.01). However, as time pass by, risk index is decreasing in experimental group. After the third task(four days later), there is no significant differences between two groups, yet in the last task(six days later), the index rebound.2.Study two adopts between-subjects design, and repeats the scenario of study one in situational test. This study aim to examine the empirical validity of situational test in decision and mental accounting investigations. Results showed that people are more willing to participate in gambling task after earning 20 yuan rewards(73%) than in laboratory experiment(68%), regardless this earning is from participation or lottery(χ2(1, 783)=4.123, p<0.05). This indicates that when not requiring real time and efforts, people are always willing to obtain more information. Yet, this is not the whole story, the first situational task is just the same as the laboratory experiment(F(1, 574)=16.336, p<0.01). When we take the time variable into consider, differences showed up. In situational test, there are no differences between experimental and control groups in the second, third and fourth task, neither did the rebound occur in the last task.3.Study three aims to further explore the risk index rebound in study one. The design is similar to study one, with the exception of provide subjects with false experimental trials and time. Results showed that whether or not the experimental group(windfall asset group) showed index rebound largely depend on their awareness of it is their last chance. The underlying mechanism is that the threshold to activate windfall gain is lower than normal income. Therefore, this result exhibited the non-fungibility of mental accounting in a brand new perspective. Innovations Points:1.The current study tentatively questioned the non-fungibility of mental accounting and found another perspective to interpret this property. For the first time, we regard the risk decision as a continuous process, and take time into consideration. This give us an opportunity to examine variation of mental accounting with time, and provide a clue for its practical application.2.We re-evaluate the appropriateness of using situational test in decision and mental accounting studies. We agree that situational test has its own validation, but it is still different from the real-world decision, which limit its value in practical studies. |
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