The Study Of Effect Of Hunger On Intertemporal Choice

Saving and consumption, a big issue affecting economic development,has always been a research hot spot. Scholars have found that people oftenface the choices at different time points: consumption in the near future, orconsumption in the long term though saving; choosing immediate smallerprofits or delayed larger revenues. Thus, the theory of intertemporal choicehas been spawned, so as to study consumers’ preferences betweendecisions at different time points.Facing intertemporal choice, people’s decisions are not alwaysrational, but are affected by many factors. In recent years, scholars havetried to combine intertemporal choice and embodied cognition to explorepersonal factors, such as blood sugar content, sexual stimulation, whichaffect decision-making. On the basis of previous studies, we creativelychoose hunger as an influence factor, to research the people’s preferenceswhen making intertemporal choices in monetary field. With enhancedsensitivity theory, we also use sensitivity to reward as a regulating variable,to explore how people of different sensitivity react in the face of the samehunger stimulation.We found that:(1) hungry people prefer to reap the benefits as earlyas possible in the intertemporal choice;(2) this effect is significant only ifpeople are sensitive to reward.The results will help to explore factors that can influence Chineseresidents’ savings and consumption, figure out a way to lower the savingrate and regulate the consumer behavior, as well as guide the work ofrelative organizations, such as banks, department of social security and so on.