Abstract: Intertemporal choice refers to decisions involving tradeoffs among costs and benefits occurring at different times. A great amount of researches have proved that, in intertemporal choice, people generally discount the later or future values, which is called time discounting, and then make tradeoffs between these vales and sooner values. Researches on this area are closely related to not only the basic scientific questions of the origins and mechanism of human mind, but also the formulation of national public policy. Utilizing methods of experimental research and large-sample survey, this proposal will explore the nature of intertemporal choice. First, using experimental researches, we will probe into the significant factors of intertempral choice. The results will (1) highlight the interactions between the valence, magnitude and delay time of intertemporal choice; (2) test whether the domain-specific effect do exist in intertemporal choice, and then explore their psychological mechanisms. Second, we will establish national norms of discounting rates for Chinese urban residents and measure the rates of different classes and types of China urban residents by a nationwide survey. These results will further our understanding of intertemporal choice.

Key words: intertemporal choice, time discounting, valence in decision-making, domain-specific, nationwide survey