Intertemporal Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Experiments with Environmental Applications

环境决策者面临着来自许多不同来源的不确定性。首先，我们无法确定人类的决定对环境的影响。其次，我们不知道生态变化将如何影响人类福利，因为环境变化的估值是不确定的。最后，决策者还面临监管的不确定性。环境决策的跨期性质增加了另一层复杂性。 选择是今天做出的，但这些选择的后果要到未来某个时候才能知道。然而，许多环境决策模型都包含了不确定性下跨期选择的假设，这些假设可能并不代表个人的真实行为方式。一个特别有问题的假设是，所有的不确定性都可以建模为风险，也就是说，可能的结果是已知的，每个结果的可能性可以估计。 在现实中，环境问题往往涉及模糊性，而不是风险，即所有可能的结果是未知的情况下，或在每个结果的概率无法估计。由于观察和测量环境决策者所面临的不确定性特别困难，因此无法使用传统的经验方法轻松研究个人行为。因此，我们将使用实验室实验来分析不确定性的性质，即是否存在风险或模糊性，如何影响跨期决策。更好地理解跨期不确定性下的个人行为将有助于我们建立更现实的环境决策模型，从而更好地设计保护人类健康和环境的政策。这些实验的结果将被用来开发一个研究计划，以分析跨期决策在更复杂的环境设置。此外，这项研究将对人类行为产生有价值的见解，可以应用于所有存在跨期不确定性的情况。

Environmental decision-makers are faced with uncertainty from many different sources. First, we cannot be certain of the effect human decisions will have on the environment. Second, we do not know how ecological changes will affect human welfare because the valuation of environmental changes is uncertain. Finally, decision-makers also face regulatory uncertainty. The intertemporal nature of environmental decisions adds another layer of complexity. Choices are made today, but the consequences of those choices are not known until some time in the future. However, many models of environmental decision-making incorporate assumptions about intertemporal choice under uncertainty that may not represent the way individuals truly behave. One particularly problematic assumption is that all uncertainty can be modeled as risk, that is situations where the possible outcomes are known and the likelihood of each outcome can be estimated. In reality, environmental issues often involve ambiguity rather risk, that is situations where all of the possible outcomes are not known, or where the probability of each outcome cannot be estimated. Because it is particularly difficult to observe and measure uncertainty faced by environmental decision-makers, individual behavior cannot easily be studied using traditional empirical methods. Hence, we will use laboratory experiments to analyze how the nature of uncertainty, that is whether there is risk or ambiguity, affects intertemporal decision-making. A better understanding of individual behavior in the presence of intertemporal uncertainty will help us build more realistic models of environmental decision-making so that we can better design policies to protect human health and the environment. The results of these experiments will be used to develop a research program to analyze intertemporal decision-making in more complex environmental settings. Moreover, this research will produce valuable insights into human behavior that can be applied in all situations where there is intertemporal uncertainty.