| Summary: | 碩士 === 明新科技大學 === 企業管理研究所 === 97 === Abstract
The conception of Time Preferenceis is first discussed by economists, they assumed that “rational people tend to choose to enjoy the desirable outcomes at present and postpone the undesirable outcomes to the future”. Thus, the utility of desirable outcomes at present will be higher than in the future. Conversely, the utility of undesirable outcomes at present will be worse than in the future. This is called positive time preference. However, many behavior evidences suggest that people prefer negative time preference rather than positive time preference. There are three main purposes in this research. First is to investigate whether different decision contexts and different decision time frame (5years/50 years) will affect people’s time preferences? Second, whether positive or negative utility will affect people’s time preference. Third, what are the determing factors of time preference? In particular, this research foucus on two main factors: “degree of improvement” and “evenness of spread”. The main result are as follows: (1) Regardless of environment, health, family life or income decision contexts, people prefer “negative time preference-slowly increasing”; and different decision time frames do not affect people’s time preference. (2) Regardless of positive or negative utility situations, most people prefer “negative time preference”. (3) Regarding the “evenness of spread”, most people prefer high frequency spread to low frequency spread, and they prefer equal spread to unequal spread. Overll, the impact of evenness of spread on time reference is higher than degree of improvement.
Key words – Time Preference, Positive Time Preference, Negative Time Preference, Evenness of Spread, Degree of Improvement.
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