Environmental Risk Preference Across Time Delays

Environmental risk involves potential negative consequences resolved in the future but it is closely related to people's current activities, and it is hence valuable to know how individuals perceive future risks. This paper captures the core characteristics of environmental risk by water pollution with negative outcomes. An experimental study was performed to investigate how delayed resolution and payment of water pollution risks influence individual choice. In the study, a bisection-based eliciting program and real compensations were employed to obtain individuals' true preferences. The results show that subjects exhibit more risk tolerance for delayed water pollution risks and this delay effect is mainly reflected in the subjective probability judgment. Besides, gender differences and individual differences were found to be noticeable in the delay effect. The present research firstly examined the impact of delay on risk preferences in the loss domain, being of important implications for understanding individual's environmental risk perception.