Trial reportThe European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care2025
Is episodic future thinking effective in mitigating the influence of time preference in time trade-off?
Trial report in The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Child- versus adult-perspective composite time trade-off valuations for the EQ-5D-Y-3L: evidence from the Hungarian valuation study.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesThe composite time trade-off (cTTO) method has been found to be influenced by time preferences for future life years, which typically results in a downward bias on cTTO utilities without adjustment. Contrary to prior research that adjusted for this distortion ex-post, this study takes an ex-ante approach, using Episodic Future Thinking (EFT), to potentially prevent time preference distortion. We aim to investigate the effect of EFT on time preference and cTTO utilities compared to using alternative methods.
methodsA total of 150 participants from the UK general public were recruited for interviewer-led online interviews and randomly assigned to either the control or treatment group. In the control group, they were asked to recall recent memories using the Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT) protocol, serving as filler tasks; in the treatment group, they were asked to imagine life in the next 10 to 20 years, i.e. using an EFT protocol. Afterwards, respondents were asked to value seven EQ-5D-5L health states with cTTO tasks, followed by a nonparametric method to measure time preference.
resultsWe observed a similar pattern of time preference across the two groups, with the majority discounting positively. EFT did not significantly affect time preference. In addition, the difference between cTTO utilities mitigated by EFT and those adjusted using the ex-post approach for time preference is minimal.
conclusionsIn conclusion, EFT does not seem to mitigate time preference for life years and has negligible effect on cTTO utilities, necessitating alternative strategies for reducing bias in health utilities.
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