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Temporal Discounting

How do people value things in the future? Generally, the longer something is delayed, the less it is worth to us. An extensive literature has been devoted to modeling and determining the factors affecting temporal discounting of financial gains. My work explores discounting of losses, environmental outcomes, and social goals.

Attribute Framing

How do different ways of describing a product affect consumer preferences, satisfaction, and demand for socially conscious purchases? For example, my work shows that consumers are willing to pay more for a carbon fee labeled as an offset than the same fee labeled as a tax. Moreover, the difference in labeling is stronger for Republicans than Democrats. In a second project, my work is exploring the difference between representing product attributes with dichotomous or continuous scales. For example, sustainable fish may be more attractive when given a simple certification (sustainable vs not) than when rated on a sustainability scale.

Social Dilemmas

How and when do people trade off their self-interest against the interest of the group? For example, how do fishermen determine how much to fish, so as to maximize their catch but not deplete the stocks? The most famous paradigm used to study this in the lab is the prisoner's dilemma. My work looks at the impacts of contextual framing and differing time horizons on people's likelihood to cooperate.

For more information, please see my publications.

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