Abstract: Consumers are constantly faced with decisions about the events that over time, and time seems to pervade every aspect of consumptive activity. However, the association between event valence and future time perception as well as the mechanism underlying the effects are still not clear. This study investigates the bi-directional relationship between the event valence and time interval perception and a possible mental construal process that may play a role in the associations.
This research spans two studies. Study 1 was two 2×2 between-subjects experiments in which we manipulated the time interval (long, short) and event type (high-construal, low-construal). One hundred and four undergraduate students from a major university in Beijing participated in experiment 1a and eighty three undergraduate students from a major university in Beijing participated in experiment 1b. The results showed that the high-construal event was perceived more attractive in distant future, while the low-construal event was perceived more attractive in near future. The results also demonstrated that construal level mediated the impact of time interval on event valence perception.
Study 2 was designed to investigate the inverse relationship of time interval and event valence. Forty-nine MBA students from a major university in Beijing participated in the study, in which we manipulated the event valence by ending with gain or loss. The results confirm previous research findings that event ending with loss looms shorter than event ending with gain occurred in the fixed time interval. Moreover, the mechanism underlying this effect is mainly driven by the construal level. That is, the event ending with gain will be construed at a high-level, which in turn makes time interval seem longer than the event ending with loss.
These findings may have some important implications. First, the results extend the scope of construal level theory by showing that the association between event valence and temporal distance is a bi-directional relationship. Secondly, the research provides insights into the mental construal process underlying these effects, which elucidates why event ending with loss looms shorter than that with gain and why temporal distance will have an impact on event valence. Thirdly, the impact of temporal distance on event valence perception depends on the type of the event. The research makes a distinction between the two types of events and investigates the effects respectively, which also offers a new perspective on studying the associations between event valence and future time perceptions. Finally, this research contributes to the construal level literature by identifying event valence as a trigger of construal level variation.

Key words: time interval, future event valence, construal level, high-construal event, low-construal event