Long-term conditions (LTCs) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Health behaviours are a component of many self-management regimes. However, adoption of health behaviours for people with LTCs is relatively low. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the role of the future as it influenced the decision to invest in health for people with LTCs. Specifically, I examined the association between the time discount rate and economic insecurity to explore how the future influences health behaviours. In the first empirical chapter, I found that the time discount rate was associated with maintained physical activity participation but not healthy eating or low-risk alcohol consumption in older adults who have at least one LTC. In the second empirical chapter, I found economic insecurity, which is the anxiety produced from an unsafe financial future, was associated with smoking in older women and physical activity in older men. In the final empirical chapter, I explored how health itself may influence perceptions of the future by investigating the effect of a lagged health shock on the time discount rate in a sample of Danish adults. I found positive health shocks were associated with becoming more future-oriented in women at the 90% significance level and more present-oriented in men at the 95% significance level. The findings of this thesis may be used in the development of policy and interventions to support commencement and adherence to self-management regimes for people with LTCs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:760003 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Dysart, Laura |
| Contributors | McNammee, Paul ; van der Pol, Marjon |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=239217 |
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