This study compared facilitator-guided EFT (researcher present on Zoom) to survey-guided EFT to see whether delivery format affects readiness to change cannabis use. Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) is an intervention for substance use disorder where people imagine positive future events in detail to reduce delay discounting (DD) (Atance & O'Neill, 2001; Bickel et al., 2020), which is the tendency to choose smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed ones (Strickland et al., 2020). The study also tested whether vividness of imagination and changes in DD explain the effect of delivery format on readiness to change.

The first hypothesis predicted that facilitator-guided EFT would lead to greater readiness to change. The second hypothesis predicted that delivery format would affect readiness to change indirectly through vividness and DD.

The first hypothesis was supported. Facilitator-guided EFT led to greater readiness to change, likely due to participation effects (McCambridge et al., 2014). However, the serial mediation was not significant. In fact, facilitator guidance reduced vividness, suggesting that having a researcher present may disrupt imagination rather than enhance it (Belletier & Camos, 2018). DD did not predict readiness to change.