The Study Of The Relationship Between Mental Accounting Of Time And Allocation Of Time

"Time is money","A day don't have two morning,time won't come back again'',these celebrated dictums mean that time is very important,and there are many celebrated dictums like this.Everyone's life is made of the time,time is of the essence,time is limited,we can use the time to create wealth,create the value of life,have no time,everything is empty.Although we have realized the importance of time,in the issue of allocation of time,the research is very limited.So far,some methods just describe objective phenomenon,some just study by theory and make conclusions which maybe have difference with actual behavior of person.The behavioral economics research orientation,which is proposed in recent years,try to discuss about the allocation of the time through compared with the study of the propensity to consume of money.The notion of mental accounting was put forward by Richard Thaler who is famous financial and behavioral economist of Chicago University.Since put forward,many scholars draw attention to mental accounting,there has been systematic research of theory and application.So far,the main research object is the money,based on the similarity of time and money,time has been as the research object also,the concept of time mental accounts was put forward in 2009 by Rajagopal and Rha,which research on the relationship between the mental accounting of time and allocation of time,it is new achievement of the issue of the allocation of time.Now,the research about the allocation of time and the mental accounting of time is still not much,so this study is aimed at research the influence of the mental accounting of time on allocation of time,using explicit behavior experiment,and explore the implicit cognitive bind by implicit association test,and the consistency of them.The first study research the relationship between the mental accounting of time and allocation of time from the explicit behavior level,aiming at explore whether there are differences in the allocation of time which is in different mental accounting,means time which obtained in different sources, and when the amount of time is different.The first study use foreign related research paradigm,using experimental method,situational experiment method,the experimental design is 2x2 between subjects design,164 college students who were randomly selected is divided into four groups,conduct four kinds of situations of experiment.Experimental results show that the source of time has a significant effect on the allocation of time,when the source of time is working situation,subjects assigned more time to work significantly than leisure situation,when the source of time is the leisure situation,subjects assigned more time to the leisure activity significantly than the work situation.The amount of time has no effect on the allocation of time.The second study research the relationship between the mental accounting of time and allocation of time from the implicit cognitive level,aiming at explore whether the cognitive connection between mental accounting of time and allocation of time which is in the implicit cognition is matching,means same as the results of overt behavior.The second study use Implicit association test,randomly selected 60 college students,finally got 52 valid subjects.The experimental results show that the connection between work time and office and learn is more closer,and the connection between leisure time and leisure entertainment is more closer,it means that implicit connection between the mental accounting of time and the allocation of time is match each other,same as the results in explicit behavior.