Essays on Regional Differences in Time Preferences and Attachment to Place

Data from a national telephone survey of working-aged adults in the continental US is combined with US Census 2000 data to explore the determinants of attachment to place and time preferences for jobs, natural amenities, and financial assets. Five regions in the US were delineated so that regional differences in the determinants of the dependent variables of interest could be parsed out. The regions are the Great Plains, Borderlands, Appalachia, the Plantation Belt, and the rest of the continental US. The first essay that explores time preferences for jobs, natural amenities, and money. Each was embedded with a ten percent rate of return. In aggregate, the nation as a whole demonstrated that the discount rate for jobs, natural amenities, and financial assets were each very different. The second essay explores the determinants of attachment to place by asking respondents how much money it would take to convince them to move to another community. Regional differences were detected both for time preferences and attachment to place. In addition to the independent variables classically used to explore our dependent variables of interest, these regional variables and their interactive expansions were observed to have a significant effect.