The Study On The Effects Of Perceived Scarcity On College Students’ Explicit And Implicit Attitudes To Money And Time

Money and time resources can be considered as the two most common resources in human decision-making,covering almost all aspects of life.However,today,the amount of time or money people have is often less than what is needed,and scarcity of money and time has become a new normal in daily life.An increasing number of studies have shown that people’s perceptions and views of money and time differ significantly,affecting not only subjective well-being,life satisfaction,moral behavior,and consumption decisions but also possibly directly influencing their preferences,choice tendencies,and emotional experiences of these two social resources.However,there is currently little research on attitudes regarding people’s understanding and views of time and money.At the same time,the scarcity of money and time resources has become a common phenomenon in today’s society,but previous research comparing attitudes towards time and money has not taken into account the important factor of scarcity perception.Therefore,this study considers the impact of scarcity perception and explores whether there are differences in individuals’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards time and money under scarcity perception conditions,further enriching the research on attitudes towards time and money and deepening the understanding of the two resources.To make the attitudes towards money and time comparable,Study 1provides a new tool to measure people’s attitudes towards money and time.The results show that the "Money and Time Semantic Differential Scale" has good reliability and validity,meeting the psychological measurement standards,and can be used as a tool for future research in this field.After multiple exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses,the scale is ultimately composed of two parts,one for measuring money and the other for measuring time,with each part having two dimensions: cognitive evaluation and life attitude.Study 2 incorporated the perception of scarcity and employed a 3(conditions: money scarcity,time scarcity,control)× 2(resource types:money,time)mixed experimental design to investigate the influence of perceived scarcity on the explicit attitudes towards money and time among college students.The results indicated that overall,individuals exhibited positive attitudes towards both money and time,and regardless of scarcity condition,their attitudes towards money were significantly more positive compared to time.Building upon the explicit attitude findings from Study 2,Study 3employed a 3(conditions: money scarcity,time scarcity,control)× 2(task types: compatible task,incompatible task)mixed experimental design to further investigate the impact of different perceived scarcities on the implicit attitudes towards money and time among college students.The results revealed that money scarcity enhanced participants’ implicit positive association with money,indicating that individuals were more inclined to associate money with positive attributes under conditions of money scarcity compared to time scarcity.In summary,although people exhibit a positive explicit attitude towards money and time,when compared to time scarcity,the scarcity of money intensifies people’s implicit positive association with money.The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of the psychological and behavioral mechanisms of human behavior in the context of resource scarcity and reveal the potential psychological changes and attitude differences people may experience when faced with money and time scarcity.These discoveries hold significant implications for further research on human decision-making,consumption,and moral behavior in scarce resource environments and provide valuable insights for future studies in related fields.