Role of Regulatory Focus: Influence of Loss and Gain upon Perception of Past/Future Time

IntroductionImaging two consumers, one is going to move from a smaller house to a bigger one which has more rooms, more interior designs, better living functions in the surroundings, and more green space in two months; to this consumer, moving from a smaller house to a bigger one is gains. The other consumer is going to move from a bigger house to a smaller one which has fewer rooms, is older, and with worse living functions and environment in two months; to this consumer, it is losses. Now, imaging another two consumers, one has moved from a smaller house to a bigger one for two months (gains), the other has moved from a bigger house to a smaller one (losses) for two months. For these four abovementioned consumers, the former two are of future gains and future losses while the latter two are of past gains and past losses. What are their subjective perceptions of time is the major subject of this study. The study of subjective perception of time may help people to understand the decision and behavior of consumers, e.g. how consumers evaluate current or future consumption, or how much discount rate will be adopted in future transaction (Loewenstein, Read, & Baumeister, 2003); these are also influences by how long the subjective perceived time is, besides the objective time. In addition, the behavior and decision of repeated consumption in the future by a consumer is likely to be influenced by the subjective perception of time (Morwitz, 1997); furthermore, subjective perceived time for the past might be helpful to explore the judgment by nostalgia, such as memory twists can be coupled with judgment by nostalgia (Taylor, 1991).Researches on the factors influencing the perception of the past time interval have been conducted in the past (Faro, Leclerc, & Hastie, 2005; Fraisse, 1984; Vohs & Schmeichel, 2003; Zakay & Block, 1996, 1997); however, the influence of past gains or losses on subjective perception of time has never been explored. The factors influencing the perception of future time interval have also been studied in the past (LeBoeuf, 2006; Zauberman et al., 2009); recent literature has further argued that the consumers' subjective perceived time of future losses is shorter than that of future gains (Bilgin & LeBoeuf, 2010). The major goal of this study, besides duplicating the research of the influence of future gains or losses on subjective perception of time by Bilgin and LeBoeuf published in Journal of Marketing Research in 2010, is to explore the influence of past gains and losses on the subjective perception of time, and compare it with Bilgin and LeBoeuf's 2010 study to explore the difference of past gains and future gains in the subjective perception of time. We predict that the subjective perceived time of future losses will be shorter than that of future gains (people perceived that the time for future losses would come pretty soon due to the fear of losses and perceived that the time for future gains would come pretty late due to the expectation of future gains); and the subjective perceived time of past gains will be shorter than that of past losses (the perceived time passes pretty soon due to the happiness of past gains and the perceived time passes pretty slow due to the pain of past losses). The abovementioned inferences are based on the loss aversion theory, that is, losses, in contrast to gains, has more subjective impact (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984; Tversky & Kahneman, 1991), e.g. the pain of losing 100 USD has more impact on emotions than that of the happiness of gaining 100 USD (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979); if the pain is going to happen in the future, the time seems to go by pretty soon (subjective perceived time is shorter), and if the pain happened in the past, days seem to go slowly like years (the subjective perceived time is longer).Besides, previous researches on perception for the past and the future did not consider the goal orientation of consumers, however, a lot of literature established in the goal -orientation had influence on the decision of consumers(Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998; Heath, Larrick, & Wu, 1999; Higgins, 2002). …