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Can You Remember Your Contactless Spend?

The method of payment has been found to affect expenditure and how well purchases and purchase price are remembered. In alignment with these findings, the introduction of contactless has led to an increase in expenditure, but its effect on expenditure recall is unknown. In this study we analyse the effect of contactless payment methods on expenditure recall. 3022 customers of an on-campus grocery store were asked to hand in their receipt and complete a short survey on their spending. Contradicting postulations derived from research on credit cards, we found that people using contactless payment methods had increased accuracy of expenditure recall. Nonetheless, the main driver of expenditure recall was found to be the number of items purchased.

Discounting Conditional Risk Sequences: An Experiment

Time discounting for monetary outcomes (e.g. Frederick et al., 2002) and non-monetary outcomes such as health (e.g. Irvine and Van der Pol 2018) has received considerable attention. In both of these literatures, the outcome in the future will typically materialise with certainty or will be determined by a one-time only uncertainty resolution. Less is known about discounting when receiving the outcomes depends on a series of conditional probabilities that extend into the future. Our experiment aims to shed some light on this because this type of future conditional risk distribution underlies some important policy applications. E.g., the generation of increases in life expectancy through reductions in air pollution, or increased road safety. In such cases, the benefits are accrued sequentially, through increased conditional probability of survival in each period. That is, the improvement in life expectancy resulting from increased chances of survival in one鈥檚 sixties can only be enjoyed if one has survived up to that period. Another example would be success in university courses where success in stage 3 is conditional on passing stages 1 and 2. We have designed an experiment in which participants make repeated choices, spaced in real time, over conditional probabilities of winning money amounts, mirroring the temporal structure of some important real world probability distributions. We are seeking opinions and feedback on this design.