Medium Induces Patience in Intertemporal Choices

ome of the most important consumer choices—ranging from financial, to health, to sustainability choices—involve intertemporal trade-offs—i.e., choosing between smaller sooner (SS) versus larger later (LL) rewards. In general, consumers tend to be impatient, preferring SS to LL rewards. In the current research, across eight studies, we show that receiving a medium, such as loyalty points, a voucher, with no immediate redemption value, can increase consumer patience. We rule out that this increased LL preference arises because consumers somehow find itself medium desirable and wish to hold it longer, they procrastinate to redeem it because cash is easier to redeem, they wait because the medium makes a LL reward feel more certain, or that the medium momentarily reduces immediate impatience by serving as a distractor/ token reward. Instead, consistent with making consumers feel more connected to their future selves and valuing the future, we find the medium effect increases as delay to receiving the later reward, or its amount, increases. Implications of these findings are discussed.