Predicting health behaviors with economic preferences & locus of control

Abstract

We present new results on the relationship between health behaviors and experimental measures of time and risk preferences. In contrast to recent findings in the economics literature, we find no evidence of a link between time preference and self-reported health behaviors and outcomes such as smoking and BMI. We also introduce evidence that internal locus of control—a psychological construct that refers to the tendency to attribute to oneself control over outcomes—explains significant variation in health behaviors, in models that also include traditional measures of risk and time preference.