Time discounting, present biases, and health-related behaviors: Evidence from Japan

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• 作者：Myong-Il Kang^a ; ^{mkang@korea-u.ac.jp" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Shinsuke Ikeda^b ; ¹ ; ^{ikeda@iser.osaka-u.ac.jp" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Health ; Time preference ; Discount rate ; Hyperbolic discounting ; Sign effect
• 刊名：Economics Human Biology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：May 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：21
• 期：Complete
• 页码：122-136
• 全文大小：831 K

文摘

Human health is considered the outcome of intertemporal choices under tradeoffs between a small immediate reward and a larger delayed reward. Health-related behaviors are thus affected by personal time preferences. Based on an Internet-based survey conducted on Japanese adults, we contribute to the literature by incorporating the multifaceted nature of time discounting in an analysis of the associations between time preference and health-related behaviors. We find that, first, less patient respondents tend to exhibit worse health-related attributes. Second, present bias, which is measured by the degree of declining impatience, is positively associated with unhealthy behaviors for naïve respondents, who are unaware of their self-control problem. Third, such associations cannot be found in sophisticates, who are aware of that. As a policy implication, direct intervention policies, including “nudging,” are more effective than a commitment device provision in correcting the unhealthy behaviors due to present bias. Fourth, the sign effect, wherein future losses are discounted at a lower rate than future gains, is negatively associated with unhealthy outcomes, although at weak statistical significance levels.