A mini-review on how COVID-19 pandemic impact on intertemporal choice

Abstract The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has extremely harmful impacts on individual lifestyles, and at present, people must make financial or survival decisions under the profound changes frequently. Although it has been reported that COVID-19 changed decision-making patterns, the underlying mechanisms remained unclear. This mini-review focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on intertemporal choice, and potential psychological, biological, and social factors that mediate this relationship. A search of the Web of Science electronic database yielded twenty-three studies. The results showed that under the COVID-19 pandemic, people tended to choose immediate and smaller rewards, and became less patient. Especially, people with negative emotion, worse physical healthy condition, or incompliance with the government restriction rules tend to become more short-sighted. Future studies should examine more longitudinal and cross-cultural research to give a broad view about the decision-making change under the COVID-19 pandemic.