[2T1-OS-23] OS-23

[2T1-OS-23-02] Continuous-Time Models for Decision Making under Present Bias

〇Yasunori Akagi¹, Hideaki Kim¹, Takeshi Kurashima¹ (1. NTT)

Keywords:Present Bias, Behavior Change, Behavioral Economics

The present bias is a bias that leads to an overestimation of immediate costs and benefits, and can hinder the success of human behavior to achieve long-term goals.
Methodologies to support goal attainment by mathematically modeling the present bias and providing appropriate interventions based on the present bias have become an important research subject in the field of behavioral economics.
Existing studies have proposed mathematical models that are easy to handle analytically, but these models can only handle discrete time intervals and are limited in the discount functions that they can handle.
In this study, we propose an extension of this model to continuous time using a variational method.
The proposed model not only describes human behavior in continuous time, but also has the advantage of being able to handle a wide class of discount functions.
Furthermore, we consider the problem of intervention optimization in this model and theoretically derive the optimal intervention strategy.