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Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health

Poor air quality and resulting annual deaths represent significant public health concerns. Recently, rapid delay discounting (the devaluation of future outcomes) of air quality has been considered a potential barrier for engaging in long term, sustainable behaviors that might help to reduce emission...

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Autores principales: Berry, Meredith S., Nickerson, Norma P., Odum, Amy L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615534/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28862671
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14090997
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author Berry, Meredith S.
Nickerson, Norma P.
Odum, Amy L.
author_facet Berry, Meredith S.
Nickerson, Norma P.
Odum, Amy L.
author_sort Berry, Meredith S.
collection PubMed
description Poor air quality and resulting annual deaths represent significant public health concerns. Recently, rapid delay discounting (the devaluation of future outcomes) of air quality has been considered a potential barrier for engaging in long term, sustainable behaviors that might help to reduce emissions (e.g., reducing private car use, societal support for clean air initiatives). Delay discounting has been shown to be predictive of real world behavior outside of laboratory settings, and therefore may offer an important framework beyond traditional variables thought to measure sustainable behavior such as importance of an environmental issue, or environmental attitudes/values, although more research is needed in this area. We examined relations between discounting of air quality, respiratory health, and monetary gains and losses. We also examined, relations between discounting and self-reported importance of air quality and respiratory health, and nature relatedness. Results showed rapid delay discounting of all outcomes across the time frames assessed, and significant positive correlations between delay discounting of air quality, respiratory health, and monetary outcomes. Steeper discounting of monetary outcomes relative to air quality and respiratory health outcomes was observed in the context of gains; however, no differences in discounting were observed across losses of monetary, air quality, and respiratory health. Replicating the sign effect, monetary outcomes were discounted more steeply than monetary losses. Importance of air quality, respiratory health and nature relatedness were significantly and positively correlated with one another, but not with degree of delay discounting of any outcome, demonstrating the need for more comprehensive measures that predict pro-environmental behaviors that might benefit individuals and public health over time. These results add to our understanding of decision-making, and demonstrate alarming rates of delay discounting of air quality and health. These results implicate a major public health concern and potential barriers to individual and societal behavior that reduce pollution and emissions for conservation of clean air.
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spelling pubmed-56155342017-09-30 Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health Berry, Meredith S. Nickerson, Norma P. Odum, Amy L. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Poor air quality and resulting annual deaths represent significant public health concerns. Recently, rapid delay discounting (the devaluation of future outcomes) of air quality has been considered a potential barrier for engaging in long term, sustainable behaviors that might help to reduce emissions (e.g., reducing private car use, societal support for clean air initiatives). Delay discounting has been shown to be predictive of real world behavior outside of laboratory settings, and therefore may offer an important framework beyond traditional variables thought to measure sustainable behavior such as importance of an environmental issue, or environmental attitudes/values, although more research is needed in this area. We examined relations between discounting of air quality, respiratory health, and monetary gains and losses. We also examined, relations between discounting and self-reported importance of air quality and respiratory health, and nature relatedness. Results showed rapid delay discounting of all outcomes across the time frames assessed, and significant positive correlations between delay discounting of air quality, respiratory health, and monetary outcomes. Steeper discounting of monetary outcomes relative to air quality and respiratory health outcomes was observed in the context of gains; however, no differences in discounting were observed across losses of monetary, air quality, and respiratory health. Replicating the sign effect, monetary outcomes were discounted more steeply than monetary losses. Importance of air quality, respiratory health and nature relatedness were significantly and positively correlated with one another, but not with degree of delay discounting of any outcome, demonstrating the need for more comprehensive measures that predict pro-environmental behaviors that might benefit individuals and public health over time. These results add to our understanding of decision-making, and demonstrate alarming rates of delay discounting of air quality and health. These results implicate a major public health concern and potential barriers to individual and societal behavior that reduce pollution and emissions for conservation of clean air. MDPI 2017-09-01 2017-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5615534/ /pubmed/28862671 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14090997 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Berry, Meredith S.
Nickerson, Norma P.
Odum, Amy L.
Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title_full Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title_fullStr Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title_full_unstemmed Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title_short Delay Discounting as an Index of Sustainable Behavior: Devaluation of Future Air Quality and Implications for Public Health
title_sort delay discounting as an index of sustainable behavior: devaluation of future air quality and implications for public health
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615534/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28862671
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14090997
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