Examining the Effect of Short-Term Affect on Farmers’ Risk and Time Preferences in Financial Decision-Making

Abstract

Farmers regularly make intertemporal decisions under risk or uncertainty. To improve how farmers behave when faced with decisions that have financial consequences, there is a need for a deeper understanding of farmers’ risk and time preferences. While the relationship between individual components of affect and risk preferences is well documented, the same cannot be said for holistic measures of affect on one hand, and for affect and time preferences on the other hand. The data analysed in this paper is the 2014–2015 Indonesian Family Life Survey Wave 5. The survey included experimental measures designed to elicit both risk and time preferences from the same subjects. We analysed the data using limited dependent variable regression models. Our findings strengthen what is known about the affect infusion model. With increased pleasant affect, farmers’ willingness to take risks increases significantly. The results also suggest that pleasant affect is associated with increased odds that farmers will choose future rewards in the long horizon but had no statistically significant effect on the short horizon. The practical implications are that an experience of pleasant affect before decision-making may cause the decision-maker (DM) to perceive a prospect as having high benefits and low risks. Pleasant affect may also induce lower sensitivity towards losses and play the role of a buffer which reduces the immediate negative impact of information that otherwise would prevent the DM from focusing on the long-term. JEL Classifications: C93, D81, D91