Abstract
Construal level theory (CLT), which has been receiving increasing attention in Consumer Behavior Studies, posits that people's evaluation toward items and incidents differs by the psychological distance between oneself and the object. When this distance is close, people mentally construe the object in terms of low-level, detailed, and contextualized features. In contrast, when the distance is far, they construe the same object in terms of high-level, abstract, and stable characteristics. Such difference in mental construal leads to different evaluation, preference, and behavior.
In Behavioral Economics, preference reversal along a time axis is called time inconsistency and has been studied mainly using “discounting”. This research proposes that, by introducing the notion of discounting into the construal level theory, a wider class of preference reversal along psychological distance beyond a time axis can be explained. Survey studies on peoples' lottery choice are used to illustrate the points.
