| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 公共衛生學研究所 === 86 === Time preference is the concept for explaining human''s intertemporal choice,
which has been widely discussed in the field of economics. Besides, the con-
cept can be used in the field health or health care as well. Theoretically, the
concept of time preference provides a model for explaining health related be-
haviors; in practice, economic evaluations of health care programs employ the
rate of time preference to discount the value of future health.
The purposes of this study are to develop the pilot instrument for both
time preferences for health and preventive care, to find the patterns of inter-
temporal choice, and to analyze the relationships between time preference and
health related behaviors. For measuring preference of intertemporal choice for
health, subjects were given some hypothetical scenarios composed with diffe-
rent health states, and the scores of the hypothetical scenarios evaluated by
subjects may reflect the preference for health. For expressing the preference
of intertemporal choice for preventive care, we gave the subjects some hypothe-
tical questions about using preventive cares in during a period
of time, and the
timing of using cares may reflect the patterns of intertemporal choice for pre-
ventive care. There were 149 students of the National Taiwan University taking
an!intersexual relationship course participated in the study.
Major findings of the study are as follows:
1. Most subjects weighted the value of future health more than present one,
and they preferred to spread worse health states over a certain time pe-
riod.
2. Most subjects preferred to utilize preventive cares early.
3. General speaking, there is no obvious association between time preferen-
ces of subjects for health/preventive care and health related behavior.
However slight evidence shows that people who preferred
to use preventive
cares latterly were more likely to live with beneficial behaviors.
We conclude that there is time preference in health, besides, improving
and spreading preferred events for health are common phenomena that may be de-
tected by our instrument.
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