Discounting Future Green: Money Vs. The Environment
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 138, No. 3, pp. 329-340, 2009
52 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2009
Date Written: August 13, 2009
Abstract
In three studies, participants made choices between hypothetical financial, environmental, and health gains and losses that took effect either immediately or with a delay of 1 or 10 years. In all three domains, choices indicated that gains were discounted more than losses. There were no significant differences in the discounting of monetary and environmental outcomes, but health gains were discounted more and health losses were discounted less than gains or losses in the other two domains. Correlations between implicit discount rates for these different choices suggest that discount rates are influenced more by the valence of outcomes (gains vs. losses) than by domain (money, environment, or health). Overall, results indicate that when controlling as many factors as possible, at short to medium delays, environmental outcomes are discounted in a similar way to financial outcomes, which is good news for researchers and policy makers alike.
Keywords: temporal discounting, intertemporal choice, environment, health, money
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
What Explains Differences in Smoking, Drinking and Other Health-Related Behaviors?
By David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser
-
What Explains Differences in Smoking, Drinking and Other Health-Related Behaviors
By David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser
-
Individual Laboratory-Measured Discount Rates Predict Field Behavior
By Christopher F. Chabris, David Laibson, ...
-
Goals and Plans in Protective Decision Making
By David Krantz and Howard Kunreuther
-
Modeling the 'Pseudodeductible' in Insurance Claims Decisions
By Michael Braun, Peter Fader, ...
-
By Paul J. Gertler and Timothy Simcoe
-
Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2002
By Tim Dall, Plamen Nikolov, ...
-
Do the Obese Really Die Younger or Do Health Expenditures Buy Them Extra Years?
By Paul Frijters and Juan D. Baron