title: The domain effect in delay discounting: The roles of fungibility and perishability.
abstract: There is a growing body of literature demonstrating domain effects where the rate of temporal discounting depends, in part, on the commodity being evaluated. The commodity of money, for example, is typically discounted much less steeply than commodities of entertainment or food. There are several plausible explanations for domain effects: differences in conditioned reinforcer status, degree of fungibility, and differences in metabolic function. While money can be thought of as a conditioned reinforcer exchangeable for a number of different outcomes (highly fungible), comparing money to food (non-fungible) does not separate whether the difference in rates of discounting are due to food having metabolic importance, being perishable, being less fungible, or all of the above. We systematically manipulated the degree of fungibility and perishability of various outcomes and found that while food outcomes tend to be discounted most steeply, the rate of discounting for these outcomes can be moderated by reducing perishability and by increasing fungibility. Important here is that we have identified two independent means of moderating the effect of delay on the value of the outcome.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, MSC 7704, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, United States. Electronic address: holtdd@jmu.edu.
authors.forename: Daniel D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, MSC 7704, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, United States.
authors.forename: Kathryn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Glodowski
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, MSC 7704, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, United States.
authors.forename: Rochelle R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Smits-Seemann
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, MSC 7704, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, United States.
authors.forename: Andrew M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Tiry
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D065786:Delay Discounting / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D012201:Reward; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Delay discounting; Domain effects; Fungibility; Perishability