Zhongwen Chen

Abstract: Managing screen time appears to be a pressing issue in our digital age. The paper studies how heterogeneous individuals in terms of self-control and self-awareness respond to information feedback and engage with soft commitment apps, influencing their screen time usage. In a field experiment involving 1183 participants, we find an asymmetric effect of feedback on self-control: individuals underestimating their screen time usage significantly reduce their usage after feedback, unlike those overestimating usage. However, we find no clear effect of the commitment on altering screen time usage. We also provide a procrastination model with diversely naive individuals, largely accounting for our experimental observations.

Abstract: This paper uses virtual reality (VR) technology to conduct a fully controlled economic experiment of human decisions such as risk-taking behaviours associated with life and death that could be difficult to achieve in both the standard fields and laboratories. In our experiment, participants virtually stand on the roof of a hundred-storey building. They need to build a plank bridge to reach a monetary reward suspended from a drone on the other side, and then walk through the plank to grab the reward, facing a probability of falling virtually. The planks vary in width and price, with wider planks offering greater security at a higher cost. We compare risk attitudes in VR to those revealed through existing methods such as (context-free) multiple price list, hypothetical questions, etc, and point out limitations of traditional risk preference elicitation methodologies used in economic experiments.