Most environmental decisions involve intertemporal trade-offs, in that they require foregoing immediate gratification for the sake of future environmental quality. One such example is investing in energy efficiency, which entails an initial upfront cost in exchange for a future stream of energy and economic savings. Our experiment explores the role of individual temporal preferences in the decision to invest in energy conservation. We report results from a study on a nationally-representative sample of 2010 United States adults. Participants chose between appliances that differed solely in price and operating costs. We manipulated the salience of energy costs and primed participants with future-oriented messages. Our treatments increased energy-efficient choices by 24 percentage points compared with the status-quo scenario. Present-oriented individuals are less likely to purchase energy-efficient appliances but loss-framed messages that highlight the opportunity cost of inefficient appliances diminish the effect of impatience on refrigerators choice.

大多数环境决策都涉及跨期权衡，因为它们需要为了未来的环境质量而放弃眼前的满足。一个这样的例子是对能源效率的投资，这需要初始前期成本以换取未来的能源和经济节约。我们的实验探讨了个人时间偏好在投资节能的决策中的作用。我们报告了对 2010 年美国成年人的全国代表性样本的研究结果。参与者在仅在价格和运营成本上有所不同的电器之间进行选择。我们操纵了能源成本的显着性，并为参与者提供了面向未来的信息。与现状相比，我们的治疗方法将节能选择增加了 24 个百分点。