Hope or fear? Unpacking the emotional architecture of personalized pension projections in Hong Kong

Amid Hong Kong’s rapidly aging population, personalized pension projection (PPP) offers a low-cost way to spur retirement planning—but through hope or fear? This three-arm randomized controlled trial tested two designs among 304 middle-aged working adults tracked over two years. Drawing on affect-as-information theory, the one-component PPP (optimistic wealth trajectories) activated broaden-and-build processes: it significantly boosted the family-relationships dimension of perceived happiness in old age, extended future time perspectives, and increased delayed gratification—psychological resources that support sustained saving. In contrast, the two-component PPP (wealth projection plus explicit savings gap), intended to trigger protection motivation via concern, produced no significant effects on worriedness about financial status in old age and retirement goal clarity. These findings suggest that culturally attuned, optimism-focused PPPs can scalably cultivate the emotional and cognitive foundations of retirement readiness as societies worldwide age.