The Influence Of Psychological Distance On Compound Risk Decision

Environmental problems are related to the sustainable development of human beings.Whether environmental problems can be solved largely depends on environmental decision-making.In a large number of realistic environmental decisions,there is often a conflict between economic results and environmental results,which affects subsequent decisions.However,the existing decision theory mainly involves the choice between homogeneous results.When multiple heterogeneous results are included in the decision,how people will make evaluation and decision can not explained by the existing one-dimensional risk decision theory.Based on these,this study aims to explore the compound risk decision-making that is closer to the realistic decision-making situation and the research results are more valuable in application,such as the money-environment compound income risk decision-making.Money-environment compound income decision-making is a compound decision situation in which people can get both money and environment profit.Previous studies on one-dimensional risk decision-making have proved that social distance and time distance have influences on monetary decision and environmental decision respectively,and such influences can be constructed by Construal Level Theory,so whether the same independent variables will have an impact on the compound risk decision-making?In this study,413 young subjects and 392 middle-aged subjects were selected to investigate the influence of social distance and time distance on the decision-making of money-environment compound income risk.Experiment 1 investigated the risk preference of two kinds of compound income decisions: greater environmental risk--less monetary risk and greater monetary risk--less environmental risk.Experiment 2 investigated the weighting differences of social distance and time distance on the monetary income and environmental income in the compound income when the compound probability was halved.Experiment 3 investigated the weighting differences of social distance and time distance on the monetary income and environmental incomein the case of the doubling of monetary and environmental income.The results of this study show that social distance,time distance and age have significant influence on compound risk decision-making:(1)compared with people with close social distance,individuals who make decisions for people with far social distance are more inclined to make decisions for environmental income in compound income(except family members);(2)Compared with the near time distance,people tend to prefer the environmental income in the compound income under the long time distance;(3)Compared with young people,middle-aged people are more inclined to the environmental income of compound income;(4)Compared with young people,middle-aged people prefer environmental income in compound income when making decisions for them selves and strangers,when making decisions for family members,both of them prefer environmental income in compound income without significant difference.This study examines the influence of social distance and time distance on the risk decision-making of the money-environment compound income,improves the research on the compound risk decision-making,and provides a reference for the relevant departments to adopt more effective environmental protection publicity and other means,thus prompting the government,enterprises and individuals to show more proenvironment decision-making tendency.