A Cross-cultural Study Of Intertemporal And Risk Attitudes Of Gains And Losses

Time and risks are important factors which influence people's daily behavioral decision making.Delay/intertemporal discounting is a psychological phenomenon which the values of future rewards decrease as time increase.Probability discounting(reflecting risk attitude)occurs when people make a choice between different risky options.People tend to prefer the safer option to risky ones.With the economic globalization,China's development has attracted the attention all over the world,and the transnational and cross-regional study of intertemporal and risk attitudes have received more and more interest.This study is based on the transnational(Han&Uygur)cultures in China.Because of the particularity of the religious belief of the Uygur people,this study discusses the religious culture as an important part of their national culture,and introduces the factors of dialectical self,religious fundamentalism and emotion in order to provide scientific references for promoting economic exchange and connectivity among the countries and nationalities along the Belt and Road(B&R).This study adopts the method of convenient sampling.200 students(100 Han&100Uygur)from Harbin Engineering University,Jilin Provincial Institute of Education and Suihua University,were recruited for intertemporal and risk attitude experiments of gains and losses,and answered the questionnaires and scales intermittently.All of them completed the experiments on-site under the guidance of the experimenter.The questionnaires and scales include:Dialectical Self Scale(DSS),Fundamentalism Religion Scale(FRS),The Positive and Negative Affect Scale(PANAS),etc.The?~2 test,independent sample t test,non-parametric test,one-way ANOVA,repeated measures ANOVA,correlation analysis,linear regression analysis,binary logistic regression analysis and other statistical methods were used to analyze the results.Based on the literature review and theoretical analysis of the variables,empirical study was conducted the results are as follows:(1)Under the influence of Han culture,participants are more sensitive to loss and show loss aversion in the process of risk decision,therefore they prefer risk avoidance.But under the influence of Uygur culture,individual performance is just the opposite of Han nationality.(2)Under the influence of Han culture,participants show a greater degree of positive relative expectation of short-term gains and a greater degree of negative relative expectation of long-term gains than Uygur nationality.(3)Whether in the case of gain or loss,participants affected by Uygur culture show a greater tendency to take risks than Han participants.(4)Participants affected by Han culture show a higher level of dialectical self and negative emotion than Uygur participants,while positive emotion positive predicts delay discounting(gain).(5)The three dimensions of dialectical self(contradiction,cognitive change and behavioral change)play a mediating role not only between nation(Han:-1,Uygur:1)and delay discounting(gain),but also between nation(Han:-1,Uygur:1)and probability discounting(gain).(6)Religious belief(no religion:0,Muslim:1)plays a completely mediating role not only between religious fundamentalism and delay discounting(gain),but also between religious fundamentalism and probability discounting(gain).