Abstract
Many strategies for reducing residential energy consumption—including product labelling programs, subsidies for the purchase of efficient devices, behavioral programs that encourage efficient energy use, and others—rely on building owners and end users to make informed investment and operational decisions. These strategies may be ineffective if consumers are unaware of how much electricity is used by different devices in their homes and buildings. This study therefore compares consumers’ perceptions of their appliances’ electricity use to these appliances’ actual direct-metered electricity consumption. Using an online survey, 118 homeowners from Austin, Texas were asked to estimate the energy consumption of six household devices which were monitored in the participants’ homes. Homeowners were randomly assigned to assess their appliance-specific electricity use in terms of energy units (kWh/month) or energy cost units ($/month) for an average summer month. Consistent with previous studies, participants overestimated the energy consumed by their low energy consuming devices and slightly underestimated that of their most energy-consuming device. Results also showed that responses of the experimental groups estimating their consumption in energy units and energy cost units were similar, the accuracy of the two groups’ perceptions was similar, and levels of confidence in the two groups were similar. These results suggest that targeted information campaigns focused on air conditioning energy consumption and device power reduction opportunities could improve consumer decision-making to save energy and reduce demand.
Highlights
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that global greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector must be drastically reduced within the 50 years to curb the risks of climate change [1]
Participants were provided with a reference point of a 100 Watt incandescent light bulb and were asked to estimate the number of energy units typically used in one hour by nine other household appliances, including light bulbs, laptops, stereos, desktop computers, room air conditioners, space heaters, dishwashers, central air conditioners, and electric clothes dryers
Because our study focused on a diverse set of specific household appliances that are commonly used, our findings will be uniquely actionable for policy and program designers responsible for designing programs and information campaigns aimed at reducing household energy use
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that global greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector must be drastically reduced within the 50 years to curb the risks of climate change [1]. Results showed that participants made small overestimations for low-energy appliances (such as light bulbs and laptops) and large underestimations for high-energy appliances (such as air conditioners and dryers) These misperceptions were attributed to participants’ use of an anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, with the light bulb serving as a natural guide for their numerical estimates. That study did not evaluate consumers’ perceptions of appliance-level electricity use, it found misperceptions consistent with those reported by Attari et al [6], such that low-use appliance categories were overestimated and high-use appliance categories were underestimated These papers and others are summarized in the recent review by Lesic et al [5]
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