TEMPORAL MEDIATION OF UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY EVALUATION

Author(s):  
JONATHAN MARKS ◽  
TOMISLAV BATEV

Limited research within entrepreneurship is available on how time affects entrepreneurs’ decision-making. We try to bridge this gap by understanding how temporal factors affect opportunity evaluation and how they affect uncertainty. Basing our hypotheses on Construal Level Theory, we ran two experiments and found that individuals modify their evaluation of the same opportunity when evaluating a distant future versus a near future event. Opportunities in the near future are more highly evaluated than distant future opportunities. Moreover, we demonstrate experimentally that uncertainty affects opportunity evaluation.

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 1125-1132
Author(s):  
YingHua Ye

Previous researchers have shown that the entrepreneurial intentions and choices of freshmen and sophomores are higher than those of juniors and seniors in China. In order to explore the reasons for this phenomenon, I conducted an experiment with 126 undergraduates from 3 universities in Zhejiang Province in China to study the relationship between temporal distance and undergraduates' entrepreneurial decision-making process. The results showed that: 1) temporal distance significantly influences undergraduates' entrepreneurial decision making, and 2) entrepreneurial decision tasks in the distant future motivate the undergraduates' cognition of desire for results (high construal level), resulting in a more positive decision, while the tasks in the near future motivate the cognition of feasibility for process (low construal level), resulting in a more negative decision.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrícia de Oliveira Campos ◽  
Marconi Freitas da Costa

PurposeThis study aims to further analyse the decision-making process of low-income consumer from an emerging market by verifying the influence of regulatory focus and construal level theory on indebtedness.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental study was carried out with a design 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention) × 2 (psychological distance: high vs low) between subjects, with 140 low-income consumers.FindingsOur study points out that the propensity towards indebtedness of low-income consumer is higher in a distal psychological distance. We found that promotion and prevention groups have the same propensity to indebtedness. Moreover, we highlight that low-income consumers are prone to propensity to indebtedness due to taking decisions focused on the present with an abstract mindset.Social implicationsFinancial awareness advertisements should focus on providing more concrete strategies in order to reduce decision-making complexity and provide ways to reduce competing situations that could deplete self-regulation resources. Also, public policy should organize educational programs to increase the low-income consumer's ability to deal with personal finances and reduce this task complexity. Finally, educational financial programs should also incorporate psychology professionals to teach mindfulness techniques applied to financial planning.Originality/valueThis study is the first to consider regulatory focus and construal level to explain low-income indebtedness. This paper provides a deeper analysis of the low-income consumers' decision process. Also, it supports and guides future academic and decision-making efforts.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Huang ◽  
Mohammad Shahidul Kader ◽  
Seeun Kim

PurposeThe authors aim to examine how the construal level, either as an individual temporal orientation or temporal distance of promotion, moderates the effects of emojis' emotional intensity on consumers' purchase intentions in social media advertising.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments are used to test four hypotheses.FindingsThe results of two experimental studies show that present-oriented participants reveal greater purchase intentions when low (vs high) emotionally intense emojis are embedded in a social media ad; but future-oriented consumers showed no difference when viewing ads with the two different emojis. In Study 2, participants indicate greater purchase intentions when a social media ad includes a distant-future promocode and high (vs low) emotionally intense emojis and an ad with a near-future promocode and low (vs high) emotionally intense emojis.Originality/valueThe current study advances our understanding how emojis with different emotional intensities can be effectively used in social media ads. This study also provides theoretical implications to construal level theory (CLT) by examining how emojis interact with construal level, either as a chronic tendency or simulated by psychological distance, can influence consumer response.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingzhou Sun ◽  
Peng Wang ◽  
Hongyu Liu ◽  
Yongfang Liu

We explored the discrepancies in risk preference in other-regarding decision making from the perspective of construal level theory. We recruited 166 university undergraduates to participant in a 2 (other: close or distant) × 2 (role of the decision maker: deciding for others vs. predicting the decisions of others) × 2 (domain: gain or loss) experiment. Results showed that participants were more risk seeking in distant other-regarding decisions than in close other-regarding decisions, when predicting the decisions of others than when deciding for others, and in the loss domain than in the gain domain. Such effects were stronger in the gain domain than in the loss domain. These findings suggest that people's risk preferences in other-regarding decision making are changeable, depending on whom they decide for and which role they play.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin M. Weisner

ABSTRACT This study reviews extant literature on construal level theory (CLT) of psychological distance (Liberman and Trope 1998; Trope and Liberman 2003). According to CLT, the concept of psychological distance constitutes a common meaning shared by four interrelated dimensions: temporal distance, social distance, spatial distance, and hypotheticality. The core premise is that psychological distance is tied to the level of mental construal (i.e., mental representation), such that more distant objects (or situations) are construed at a higher level and higher-level construals evoke thoughts of more distant objects (Trope and Liberman 2010). CLT further suggests that mental construals influence evaluation, prediction, and behavior (Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak 2007). In spite of the fact that CLT is considered a prominent contemporary theory and comprehensive framework for judgment and decision-making, behavioral accounting research, with few exceptions, has largely ignored the theory's predictions and insights. However, as accounting, auditing, and business in general become increasingly global and geographically dispersed, the perspectives provided by CLT should no longer be ignored. This study aims at illustrating CLT's potential for investigating hitherto unexplained phenomena within the accounting domain and argues that CLT provides the potential for a superior understanding of the heuristics and biases in judgment and decision-making that are associated with distance-affected decision environments. The paper reviews the findings reported in 88 articles (and one book chapter) with an emphasis on publications that apply CLT in contexts that are of particular interest to accounting researchers. CLT's underlying theoretical logic, its commonalities, and its differences with related theories and models are explained through a detailed review of the insights gained from basic CLT research. Commonly applied methods associated with experimental manipulations are highlighted, and broad, CLT-based research questions pertaining to various accounting domains are offered.


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