Utility During Anticipation, Event, and Recall

What is it about?

In this paper, we dissect the enjoyment liked to any event into three major components: the utility before the occurrence of the event (anticipation utility), the utility as the event unfolds (event utility), and the utility after the event has occurred (recall utility). Then, we propose the Anticipation-Event-Recall (AER) model that formally links these three components of total utility in a comprehensive formulation. The AER model predicts the temporal profile of moment-by-moment utility throughout the entire event timeline. The AER model entails several unique modeling features capturing the psychological elements of conceptual consumption, adaptation during anticipation, and magnitude effects in discounting.

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Why is it important?

The AER model provides several insights, such as the U shape of instant utility during anticipation, the trade-off between anticipation and total utility, and some of them consistent with common intuition or previous research findings (e.g., duration neglect). In three sets of experiments with real and hypothetical events, we find empirical support for the U shape of anticipatory utility, the preference for unique (versus repeated) experiences, and the optimal duration of anticipation.

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