With the past year of high inflation and the recent increasing unpredictability of the future economic market, making the right financial choice is important. People struggle with delayed financial gratification, making it difficult to save. If given the choice between receiving a financial reward at an earlier or later date, the reward on the later date would need to be larger for the options to appear equivalent; the percent change between the earlier and later reward amounts is the discount rate. In the field of economics, textual questions have been used to research different aspects of discounting and financial decision-making. Independently, the field of visualizations has shown that layouts and interaction styles affect decision-making. Through the novel conversion of textual financial questions into calendar visualizations, we explore the effects of visualization on discounting by designing and implementing a modular survey in React and hosting it on Amazon Web Services. We found no general difference between a textual and a calendar visualization. In only two out of the eight questions we found a difference in choice or timing.

Creator

• Nachum, Yahel

Mitwirkende

• Heffernan, Neil
• Reichman, Daniel

Degree

• MS

Unit

• Computer Science

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• etd-104386

Stichwort

• visualizations
• money earlier or later questions
• calendar
• discounting

Advisor

• Reichman, Daniel

Orcid

• https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3965-3520

Defense date

• 2023-04-20

Year

• 2023

Date created

• 2023-04-23

Resource type

• Thesis

Source

• etd-104386

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Zuletzt geändert

• 2023-09-20