Preferences for Time, Risk, and Future Generations

时间偏好表明决策者对未来结果的重视程度。 它们可以量化为时间贴现率（抵消延迟所需的价值增加）。 目前的研究扩展了PI以前的研究，解决了两个相关的研究问题。 第一，个人贴现率与社会贴现率和代际贴现率有何不同？ 虽然大多数以前的研究都涉及个人对自己一生中发生的结果（通常是对自己）的时间偏好，但许多重要的社会跨期选择涉及后代发生的结果（例如，污染，全球变暖）。 一些理论家认为，适用于代际选择的贴现率应该不同于（低于）适用于代际决策的贴现率，但很少有实证研究探讨这种区别。 四个实验测试了两个描述性的理论，关于代际和代际内的贴现率如何以及为什么会不同。解决的第二个问题是：跨期选择和不确定性下的选择偏见可以解释的共同机制？ 虽然有相当多的跨期选择的研究，大多数决策研究继续解决不确定性下的选择。三个实验扩展了以前的工作，在绘制跨期选择和不确定性下的选择之间的相似之处和测试的想法，相同的决策过程的基础偏见在这两个领域。 这两个研究问题提供了一个基本的和应用的焦点。 这两个重点是相关的，因为政策结果如果拖延很长时间，几乎总是涉及不确定性和拖延。

Time preferences indicate how much decision makers value future outcomes relative to more immediate outcomes. They can be quantified as a temporal discount rate (the increase in value necessary to offset a delay). The current research extends previous research by the PI by addressing two related research questions. First, how and why do individual discount rates differ from societal and intergenerational discount rates? Whereas most previous research has concerned time preferences that individuals display for outcomes that occur (usually to themselves) in their own lifetime, many important societal intertemporal choices involve outcomes that occur to future generations (e.g., pollution, global warming). Several theorists have argued that the discount rate applied to intergenerational choices should differ (be lower) than that applied to intragenerational decisions, but little empirical research has explored this distinction. Four experiments test two descriptive theories about how and why inter- and intra- generational discount rates might differ. The second question addressed is: can biases in intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty be explained by common mechanisms? Although there is a sizeable body of research on intertemporal choice, most decision research continues to address choice under uncertainty. Three experiments extend previous work in drawing parallels between intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty and test the idea that the same decision processes underlie biases in these two domains. These two research questions provide both a basic and an applied focus. These two foci are related because policy outcomes with very long delays almost invariably involve uncertainty as well as delay.