Does Carrying a Physical Burden Promote Earlier Repayment?—A Exploratory Nudge Study Based on the Negative Discounting in Intertemporal Decision-Making
Description
In the lending process, individuals must weigh the trade-off between early repayment and postponement. Encouraging early repayment aligns with the phenomenon of negative discounting in intertemporal decision-making. Negative discounting occurs because individuals experience anticipated dread when faced with future negative events. This study explored how "carrying a burden", highlighted through physical burden and weight-related emojis, can influence individuals' intertemporal repayment choices and the underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, a field experiment was conducted to test the nudge effect of "carrying a burden" on promoting earlier repayment. The results revealed that: (1) In laboratory experiments, participants in the burdened group tended to repay earlier, with the mediating effect of anticipated dread being partially significant. (2) In field experiment, the burdened group presented an increased number of on-time repayments. This study further validates the negative discounting phenomenon in intertemporal decision-making and provides a foundation for interventions and nudges to reduce repayment delays.
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Steps to reproduce
Study 1: College student participants were recruited through online WeChat Moments and participant recruitment groups. A simple interactive program was created using Figma software to ensure a certain level of interactivity and clickability, making the story material complete and immersive. Any double-shoulder bag was used (if multiple groups were conducted simultaneously, it was recommended to use the same model of double-shoulder bag). 10 kg of load-bearing materials were purchased, with this paper using 0.5 kg bottles of mineral water, totaling 20 bottles, allowing for arbitrary increase or decrease in the weight of the backpack before and after the load. The questionnaire was printed in a unified color on paper. A 16-inch laptop computer was used, with the height ensuring that participants could easily operate and clearly see the program content while standing. Upon arrival at the laboratory, the researcher guided the participants to read the instructions, complete the interactive program while standing according to the standard experimental procedure, and then provided them with the questionnaire to fill out, promptly answering any questions they did not understand. The research results were analyzed using the SPSS statistical software. Study 2: College student participants were recruited through online social circles, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and Weibo. To ensure authenticity, their student IDs were verified, and they signed an online informed consent form. After recruitment, a pretest questionnaire was used to divide the participants into experimental and control groups. Following this, a longitudinal intervention and questionnaire experiment began, with daily communication with the participants (the control group was asked general knowledge questions about life, while the experimental group was asked about their debt amounts and shown images of weight-bearing).