The health status of resident populations plays an integral role in the social and economic development of nations. In the face of tightening resource constraints, finding ways to make successful tradeoffs between present economic development and the future health of resident populations has become anurgent and grim reality that modern societies, such as China, have to deal with. These tradeoffs are closely related to the intertemporal choice for health behavior. Previous behavioral decision-making studies have proven that individuals' intertemporal choice for health is psychologically distinct from that for money. However, the mechanism of intertemporal choice for health has yet to be fully understood. Recently, the resource scarcity theory in social psychology had proposed that, the resource scarcity may affect people' strategies in important decisions. Thus, we speculate that the intertemporal choice for health may be influenced by resource status and other related factors, i.e., enviorments and individual differences. From this perspective and utilizing methods of experimental research, eye tracking, large-sample survey, as well as a comparison between different samples, the project aims to: (1) investigate the effects, psychological mechanism and boundary conditions of resource status to intertemporal choice for health, (2) probe national norms of intertemporal choice for health in Chinese urban populations, and (3) examine a variety of factors affecting these effects, e.g., early/present envioment, gain/lose valence, and attention bias. The results of this project can deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying intertemporal choice, thereby providing a solid foundation based on psychological theories for the promotion of healthy behavior and stipulating public intertemporal policies.
修改评论