Berry Meredith S, Repke Meredith A, Conway Lucian G
Human Behavioral Pharmacology and Decision-Making Laboratory, Department of Health Education and Behavior, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Front Public Health. 2019 Oct 25;7:308. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00308. eCollection 2019.
Poor air quality contributes to nearly 7 million premature deaths annually and remains a major public health concern. In order to directly address the future of air quality and current emissions, some economists and policy makers have stressed adopting a "zero discount rate" (or lowest possible) to promote clean air quality now and in the future. A low discount rate is also associated with individual health behaviors (e.g., exercise and lower rate of substance abuse). But what influences the psychology of decision-making that is relevant to the discount rate of air quality and public health outcomes, and individual health? The present experiments evaluated differences in such decision-making (i.e., delay-discounting) in the context of improved air quality with visual exposure to natural vs. built environments. Results showed that individuals exposed to natural scenes discounted improved air quality less (i.e., made more future-oriented decisions, Experiment 1), and this may be related to expanded space perception (Experiment 2). These results are the first to suggest that delay discounting of air quality (or any environmental outcome), similar to money, is malleable, and can be influenced by exposure to natural relative to built environments. These findings have implications for influencing long-term, individual health, and environmentally relevant decision-making and improving individual and public health related outcomes such as air quality.
恶劣的空气质量每年导致近700万人过早死亡，仍然是一个主要的公共卫生问题。为了直接应对空气质量的未来和当前排放问题，一些经济学家和政策制定者强调采用“零贴现率”（或尽可能低的贴现率）来促进现在和未来的清洁空气质量。低贴现率也与个人健康行为有关（例如，锻炼和较低的药物滥用率）。但是，是什么影响了与空气质量贴现率、公共卫生结果以及个人健康相关的决策心理呢？本实验评估了在视觉接触自然环境与人工环境的情况下，在改善空气质量的背景下这种决策（即延迟贴现）的差异。结果表明，接触自然场景的个体对改善空气质量的贴现较少（即做出更面向未来的决策，实验1），这可能与空间感知的扩展有关（实验2）。这些结果首次表明，空气质量（或任何环境结果）的延迟贴现与金钱类似，是可塑的，并且可以受到相对于人工环境的自然环境接触的影响。这些发现对于影响长期的个人健康、与环境相关的决策以及改善诸如空气质量等个人和公共卫生相关结果具有启示意义。
