Effectiveness of direct and indirect time preference elicitation methods across domains in predicting health behaviors: Evidence from Rural China

Health behaviors, which involve trade-offs between current costs and future benefits, are closely associated with individuals’ time preferences. This study investigates the effectiveness of two time preference elicitation methods—indirect (experimental) and direct (self-reported)—in predicting health behaviors using a representative sample of rural residents from Shaanxi, China. These methods were evaluated across two domains: financial and health. Our findings indicate that direct methods significantly outperformed indirect methods in predicting smoking and physical exercise behaviors in survey settings. Furthermore, time preference methods in the health domain were more predictive of health behaviors than those in the financial domain. Specifically, health-domain time preferences significantly predicted both smoking and physical exercise, while financial-domain preferences only predicted physical exercise. Based on these findings, we recommend the use of direct time preference elicitation methods from the health domain in large-scale questionnaire surveys to assess time preferences related to health behaviors in rural populations.