Decision-Making Styles Shaping College Students’ Sports and Health Consumption Preferences: Behavioral and Neurological Evidence

To investigate the influence of decision-making styles on college students’ sports and health consumption preferences and the underlying cognitive neural mechanisms, this study recruited 39 college students as participants, adopted a one-factor within-subjects design, and combined behavioral experiments with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). It examined consumption preferences and brain activation characteristics in maximizers and satisficers under three conditions: no promotion, discount promotion, and public welfare promotion. In behavioral terms, college students demonstrated the highest inclination towards public welfare promotions, with discounts being the second most favored, while the no-promotion condition received the lowest preference. Maximizers preferred discount promotion, while satisficers prioritized public welfare promotion. In neural terms, public welfare promotion widely activated the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas discount promotion only activated a local region of this cortex. Maximizers showed the strongest activation in the corresponding region under discount promotion, and satisficers exhibited more significant activation in the corresponding region under public welfare promotion. Decision-making styles shaped consumption preferences through depth of information processing and brain activation patterns: maximizers focused on rational calculation and benefit maximization, while satisficers relied on intuitive experience and value perception. These findings provide behavioral and neuroscientific evidence for precision marketing in the sport and health consumption market and the implementation of the national fitness program.