The Relation Between Impatience and Health Behaviours

This research examines the relationship between impatience and different types of health behaviours. The behaviours that are investigated concern two types of behaviour; behaviour that reflects negatively on the long term (risky behaviour) and behaviour that reflects positively on the long term (wise behaviour). It is hypothesised that these risky behaviours (drinking alcohol and smoking) coincide with higher levels of impatience and that the wise behaviours (exercising and eating healthy) coincide with lower levels of impatience. The level of impatience is measured with the subjective discount rate. This paper uses a newly developed method of determining subjective discounting called the Direct Method. In total 70 students of the Erasmus University Rotterdam were interviewed. The data was used to estimate multiple probit models, predicting the probability that a student displays certain behaviour. Using the whole sample of data, statistically significant relations were observed between the impatience levels and the behaviours smoking and eating healthy. Using an adjusted sample mild relations were detected between the discount rate and the combination of drinking and smoking. These relations were however inconsistent and not strong, therefore it is concluded that no relation between the impatience level and various health behaviours could be detected in this sample. Besides these findings, also useful insights on using the Direct Method could be taken from this research.