The relationship between economic value of time and feelings of time pressure

Abstract

The issue of time pressure concerns both scholars and the general public. We conducted 2 experiments in which university students (67 participants in Experiment 1, 69 in Experiment 2) were randomly assigned to different economic values of time. Contrary to previous findings, we found that subjective expectations played an important mediating role in the relationship between the economic value of time and feelings of time pressure. If the economic value of time was lower than the participants expected, this negatively affected their perceived time pressure. In contrast, if the economic value was higher than the participants expected, this enhanced their perceived time pressure. We found that the opportunity cost of time perspective was the most applicable of 3 theoretical explanations in explaining the relationship between the economic value of time and time pressure.