Essays on Sustainable Consumer Behavior and the Interaction of Risk and Time Preferences

This dissertation contains five papers on economic behavior that primarily focus on decision-making in the present with consequences for the future. The papers are methodologically diverse and can be subdivided into two independent parts. The first part is focused on two established strands of the behavioral economics literature: time and risk preferences - specifically on their interaction. As contributions to the behavioral economics literature, the three papers in the first part are theory-driven. Specifically, one paper contains an axiomatic analysis of a class of intertemporal risk preferences, and two empirical papers test properties and predictions of said class. Methodologically, the empirical contributions follow the experimental economics convention and are based on laboratory experiments with a specific focus on incentivizing behavior.
The second part of this dissertation focuses on consumer decision-making and takes a more psychological approach. This part contains two empirical papers investigating preferences for sustainable consumption, i.e., consumer behavior influencing future resources. The two papers consider physiological influences on consumer behavior, specifically, the influences of hunger and ambient temperatures on decision-making. Methodologically, the two reported lab experiments focus on unincentivized choice behavior and put a focus on the physiological treatment manipulations and the reliability and validity of the measurements of psychological variables.