EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Anticipatory Consumptions

Liang Guo ()
Additional contact information
Liang Guo: CUHK Business School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

Management Science, 2020, vol. 66, issue 8, 3717-3734

Abstract: Mental simulations such as anticipatory and/or retrospective emotions can yield higher weight for a delayed consequence than for current well-being (i.e., negative devaluing). In this research, we investigate the behavioral and welfare implications of negative devaluing for intertemporal consumptions in an intrapersonal game. Our general framework accounts for two distinctions: desired versus undesired consumptions, and naive versus sophisticated beliefs about future selves’ preferences. Naive people procrastinate desired consumptions and preproperate undesired ones. The behavior of sophisticated people generally exhibits a cyclical pattern. Sophistication may either mitigate or exacerbate the time-inconsistency problem, and hence may improve or undermine long-run welfare, depending on the valence and the units of consumptions and on whether consumptions are tied consecutively. In addition, our comparative statics analysis generates surprising results with respect to the impacts of decision parameters (e.g., deadline, consumption units). We also discuss implications for targeted pricing, product design, promotion strategies, and savings.

Keywords: anticipation; emotions; negative devaluing; time inconsistency; time preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3367 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:66:y:2020:i:8:p:3717-3734

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:66:y:2020:i:8:p:3717-3734