Time Passes Fastly Or Slowly?

In the real world,people often make choice between short-term and long-term benefits,and the process of individual choosing benefits at different points of time is also referred to as intertemporal choice,in the early years,these scholars including economists and psychologists analyzed such kind of behavior and found a large number of influential factors and theoretical mechanisms,especially psychology connectedness as a critical factor is widely studied by the scholars such as Loewenstein(1996),Bartels(2010),Ersner-Hershfield(2012),Urminsky(2014)and etc.Researchers have explored the influence of psychological connectedness on the intertemporal choice in recent years,while the mechanism of the process is not further analyzed and illustrated.On the basis of Construal Level Theory,This research points out the mediation of perceived time between Psychological connectedness and intertemporal choice,and takes into account the moderator of product category,analyzing the moderating effect of product category between psychological connectedness and intertemporal choice.This research employs four experiments totally to test the mediation of perceived time and the moderator of product type,results indicates that the more consumers are closely connected psychologically to their future selves,the shorter time they will perceive for this period,the perceived time mediates between the Psychological connectedness and intertemporal choice.In addition,we find out that the effect of Psychological connectedness on intertemporal choice is moderated by the product category,when rewarded with hedonic product,both the individual of high connectedness and low connectedness are inclined to choose the smaller immediate benefits,which is distinct from the situation of being rewarded with the utilitarian product.This study innovatively introduces the variable of time perception,analyzing the influence of psychological connectedness on time perception on the basis of construal level theory,and further discussing the mediating role of time perception in the process of the effect of psychological connectedness on intertemporal choice,deepening the Parfit's Theory,enhancing the Parfit's theory as the interpretation mechanism.Meanwhile,from a new point of view,this paper introduces the product type as the moderator and explores its influence on psychological connectedness and the intertemporal choice,furtherly expanding the field of intertemporal choice.Finally,this study provides the corresponding marketing suggestions and guidance for the enterprises,especially the financial enterprises.