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Time = Money. Freya Caudwell, Beki Hardcastle, Sarah Fraser & Alan Pye. When time is money – the effect of hourly payment on the evaluation of time. Composed of three related studies.
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Time = Money Freya Caudwell, Beki Hardcastle, Sarah Fraser & Alan Pye
When time is money – the effect of hourly payment on the evaluation of time • Composed of three related studies. • All studies relate to whether or not people paid hourly develop different conceptions of time in comparison to people paid a salary, with specific regards to how much they view time as being worth.
Study 1 • Built on a study by Soman(2001). • Analysed whether people paid hourly wages held stronger to the view of time in monetary terms, compared to those who were not paid hourly. • Predicted people paid an hourly wage would be more likely to agree to statements of mental accounting relating to viewing time in monetary terms.
Study 1 – method • 88 participants. • Anonymous questionnaire. 86% of participation rate. • 10 ppts excluded from analysis. • 11 ppts paid hourly, rest salaried. • Rated endorsments of 8 statements of mental accounting from Soman(2001) on a 1-9 likerk scale.
Study 1 – results • Calculating hourly wage had an effect on how ppts viewed money(p = .02) • Hourly participants did not vary from salaried participants in response to statements (p=.4) • However, they were more likely to endorse mental accounting model for time (p=.07) • Hourly ppts scored higher on every individual question on Somans scale (p=.008) • No difference directionally between salaried and non salaried with respect to monetary response.
Paper 1, study 1 - critique • Sample possibly non-representative. • Utilised opportunity sampling. • 11vs54 ppt subgroups, possible problems relating to statistical power. • Time constraints. • Waiting for train might well make economic factors more salient. • Work by the hour jobs might attract a specific type of person. • Didn’t ask about previous experience of working jobs that pay by the hour.
Study 2 • Building on the previous study – attempting to determine what other factors might mediate viewing time in a monetary sense and determine the effect sizes of the relevant effects. • Used publicly available survey data • Controlled for factors that might affect the experiment – earnings, marital status, education etc.
Study 2 – method • May 2001 current population survey work schedule supplement was used (CPS 2001). • Most recent datasheet to include items assessing willingness to trade time for money • Ppts were asked if they would work less time for less money, the same hours for the same amount, or more hours for more money. • Weekly earnings, amount of hours worked, and sector of job were controlled for.
Study 2 – results • Most salient variables for willingness to trade time for money were current earnings and hours currently worked. • Hourly workers earned less, and worked less long. • Significant differences between hourly and salaried (p<.0001). 32.1% of hourly vs 17.1% of salaried were willing to trade. • Hourly payment associated significantly with willingness to trade (p=.003) according to a regression equation, including control variables. • Effect size of hourly payment was comparable to actual number of hours spent working (a much more significant effect (p<.0001)).
Paper 1, study 2 - critique • Huge sample size of ~13,000 • Only measured current payment conditions, not life experience of being paid by the hour. • Many variables controlled for. • Disinterest in survey might affect results. • Variation in who responds to survey. • No variable manipulation – can’t state causation.
Study 3 • Analysed the effects of lifetime exposure to hourly wage on viewing time in a monetary sense. • Determine whether or not making salaried people view their wages in terms of payment per hour would lead to them viewing time in a more monetary sense. • Attempting to factor in the variable of how much economic criterion relate to their day to day decision making processes.
Study 3 - method • 62 Ppts (39 female) from nationwide database at a university. • Online questionnaire paying ppts $5. Ages ranged from 19 to 67. • Ppts responded to three questions about how much they earned before taxes, how many hours they worked per week, and how many weeks they worked per year, in the previous year. • Some participants were asked to calculate their hourly wage. • A 7 point Likert determined how much experience ppts had with working for hourly wages, and how much more or less time they would spend if given the option on paid work. • Ppts completed three items determining the extent to which they considered economic criteria salient when making decisions, determined with a 7 point Likert scale.
Study 3 – results • Prior exposure to hourly work was associated with willingness to spend more time on paid work (p=.01). • A main effect of calculating an hourly wage was not found, but there was a significant interaction between the experimental condition and prior hourly experience (p=.04). • Prior exposure to hourly payment was associated with a greater salience of economic factors (p=.002). • A mediation analysis revealed that the interaction between hourly payment experience and willingness to spend more time to make more money was mediated by the salience of economic factors in decision making.
Paper 1, study 3 - critique • Ppts numbers were low, although they were selected from a large group. • Participation reward was given as a voucher for a specific retailer. • No main effect of calculating hourly wage. • Mediation, but yet again insufficient data on other variables that ought to be included. • No true controls.
Time, money, and happiness. How does putting a price on time affect our ability to smell the roses? • Composed of three related studies • All studies relate to how the impatience that stems from putting a price on time impairs ability to derive happiness from enjoyable experiences.
Study 1 • Analysed the effect of an unexpected period of leisure time on the computer on the ppts happiness. • Predicted ppts prompted to consider the monetary value of their lost time would derive less happiness from it than unprompted participants.
Study 1 - method • 53 undergraduates (32 female) as ppts, all received $5. • Upon arrival, completed questionnaires, and then were given 10 minutes leisure time on the internet, and completed a happiness rating at the end. • Answered questions on their employment expectations post university. • Some participants calculated their expected hourly wage, others did not. • Assessed ppts happiness with a 5 point Likert scale question, prior to experimental manipulation and post leisure period.
Study 1 – results • 2*2 repeated measures ANOVA. • Participants asked to calculate their hourly wage were no happier after the leisure period than before (p=.43), but ppts who did not were happier post leisure period (p=.01).
Paper 2, study 1 - critique • $5 participation payment. • Only 53 ppts, that might not be generalizable. • Given ppts were in further education talking about future wages, they were likely to be overly ambitious. • Ppts were asked – “Do you feel happy in general” - this might not capture the variations between peoples emotions (Clark et al, 1988, Lepper et al, 1999, Zhang et al, 2002). • Being prompted to think about time might have affected browsing habits. • No mention of R^2 or R in regression, or altered R^2. This limits the information we can gain from the regression equations. • No pure control condition.
Study 2 • Hypothesised that thinking about the monetary value of time induces a sense of impatience with the leisure period, and that this is the mediating effect on happiness. • Utilised listening to music instead of leisure period to induce happiness.
Study 2 - methods • 401 ppts, 237 female, recruited from Amazons mechanical turk worker pool, in exchange for $1. • 39 of these ended up being excluded. • Used the same questions about income as before, but this time it referred to the income in the previous year, instead of expected income. • Added a pure control condition, with no mention of work or income. • Responded to a similar question on happiness, but this time with a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) (Horne et al, 1988). • Six self report items used to measure impatience.
Study 2 – results • Ppts in the experimental condition experienced less happiness after the music than either the control or the pure control group (p=.03) • Ppts in the experimental condition experienced more impatience listening to the music than the control or the pure control group (p=.003). • Mediation analysis revealed that the effect of thinking about hourly wage on happiness was mediated entirely by impatience.
Paper 2, study 2 - critique • Impatience is a poorly defined variable – it could be misreported for due to social desirability and demand characteristics. • Impatience items had high Cronbachs alpha. • Using VAS for the impatience items artificially conflates Cronbachs, since people seem unlikely to have too much variation. • Uses mechanical turk, a unique subject pool that is unlikely to be overly generalizable(Ross et al, 2010, Gosling et al 2011) • Utilises a lot of T-tests, with no mention of checking assumptions. • In one T-test, determined no difference between groups based on T(370) = 1.56, p=.119. This seems overly ambitious, given it affected later analysis.
Paper 2, study 2 - critique • Used music instead of internet. • Measured happiness with a different metric to that of study 1. The question was different – “Do you feel happy in general” compared to “How happy do you feel right now”. They were also measured on different scales. • Talks about impatience mediating the effect of calculating an hourly wage on happiness. • No happiness test before music, therefore could be measuring from a baseline of pre-music happiness which might differ between groups.
Study 3 • Wanted to extend study 2. • Hypothesised that being paid for listening to the music would have a direct effect on the happiness of those people who are considering their hourly wage. • Would have no effect on the happiness of those people who have not considered their hourly wage.
Study 3 - method • 205 ppts, 117 female recruited from Amazons mechanical turk in exchange for $1. • 21 of these were excluded from final analysis, and a further 39 were excluded because they were part of study 2. • Control conditions were replaced with making ppts carry out meaningless arithmetic equations. • Half of ppts were explicitly compensated 50 cents for the time spent listening to the music. • Two VAS scales were introduced to measure ppts enjoyment of the music.
Study 3- results • Ppts paid to listen to the music enjoyed it more than those who were not (p=.04). • Ppts who calculated hourly wage and were compensated derived more enjoyment from the music than those who were not compensated (p=.004). Control ppts did not differ significantly deepening on compensation however, (F<1). • In no compensation groups, enjoyment was significantly lower in the group required to consider their hourly wage (p=.09). • A mediation analysis indicated that the hourly wage vs happiness relationship became insignificant when impatience was considered. • Impatience also predicted happiness significantly (P<.001).
Paper 2, study 3 - critique • Utilised mechanical turk, which might be a poor worker pool. • Excluded ppts who participated in study 2, preventing possible confounds from that. • Made repeated subdivisions of groups into conditions. This might have sacrificed statistical power. • Implied significance of an effect at p=.09. Arguably, this is not significant, since p =/=<.05, however, due to the reasons stated above, this is likely due to sample subdivisions, and not a lack of an effect (Goodman, 1999). • Had questions to test for enjoyment of music, which possibly accounts for some critique relating to musical taste.
