The Influence Of Time Pricing And Level Of Understanding On Environmental Intertemporal Decision-making

The process of making trade-offs between the benefits and losses at different points in time is called intertemporal decision making.Such decisions involve not only revenue but also the environment: if the environment is protected,policymakers need to weigh the costs of recent environmental protection with the higher costs of long-term environmental damage.Environmental intertemporal decision-making has two main dimensions of time and value,involving individuals' comparison and perception of time and value.Studies have shown that time pricing can make individuals more short-sighted and prefer recent options.In addition,previous studies have found that the level of knowledge has an important impact on intertemporal decision-making.Individuals' different psychological representations of things will affect preferences in intertemporal decision-making.Therefore,this study designed three experiments to investigate the impact of time pricing and literacy levels on environmental intertemporal decision-making.Study 1 explores the psychological state of different time pricing and literacy levels,and discusses the time pricing and literacy level.The impact of environmental intertemporal decision-making,Study II and III further explore the “boost” effect of initiating these two psychological states on environmental willingness and actual donation behavior,which will help the government to formulate environmental policies and measures from a longer-term perspective.Achieving the strategic goals of sustainable development.The main results of the study are as follows:(1)Time pricing has a significant impact on environmental intertemporal decision-making.Time pricing allows individuals to prefer near-term options in environmental intertemporal decision-making,with a higher time discount rate,and reduces individual environmental willingness and reduced donation amount.(2)The level of understanding has a significant impact on environmental intertemporal decision-making.Individuals with high level of understanding prefer long-term options in environmental intertemporal decision-making,with lower time discount rate,higher environmental willingness and higher donation amount.(3)Time pricing and literacy levels interact to affect environmental intertemporal decision making.For time pricing groups,individuals with high literacy levels prefer long-term options in environmental intertemporal decision-making compared to individuals with low literacy levels.The time discount rate is lower,the environmental willingness is higher,and the donation amount is higher.