IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jcopol/v40y2017i1d10.1007_s10603-016-9328-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decision-Making Strategies for the Choice of Energy-friendly Products

Author

Listed:
  • Signe Waechter

    (ETH Zurich)

  • Bernadette Sütterlin

    (ETH Zurich)

  • Michael Siegrist

    (ETH Zurich)

Abstract

Although energy efficiency of many products has been improving constantly, residential energy consumption is not decreasing as much as desired. Therefore, the goal of the European Union (EU) and many other countries is to promote energy-friendly product choices (i.e., choice of products with low energy consumption). In a purchase situation, consumers are confronted with a wide range of energy-related information that can influence the decision-making process. Understanding how consumers reach a decision based on the information provided and identifying decision-making strategies that are beneficial or destructive in terms of energy friendliness is crucial for the improvement of existing energy-policy measures and, consequently, for the successful achievement of target energy saving goals. This paper provides insights from an exploratory eye-tracking study (N = 59) investigating consumers’ decision-making process. Participants were required to identify the most energy-friendly television (i.e., the television with lowest energy consumption). Cluster analysis revealed three consumer segments with different decision-making strategies: the energy-directed lexicographic, unsystematic lexicographic, and unsystematic exhaustive strategies. The energy-directed lexicographic strategy resulted in 60% optimal choices in terms of energy friendliness, unsystematic lexicographic in 33%, and unsystematic exhaustive in 38%. No decision-making strategy resulted in 100% optimal choices in terms of energy friendliness. Findings emphasize that lexicographic strategies can successfully identify energy-friendly products when the correct information (i.e., actual energy consumption) is used. However, a lexicographic strategy can be very misleading and result in non-optimal choices in terms of energy friendliness when it is based on ambiguous information (i.e., energy efficiency information) that does not enable a conclusive decision. Further, this paper discusses implications for policy-makers and marketers for the promotion of energy-friendly consumer behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Signe Waechter & Bernadette Sütterlin & Michael Siegrist, 2017. "Decision-Making Strategies for the Choice of Energy-friendly Products," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 81-103, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jcopol:v:40:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10603-016-9328-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10603-016-9328-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10603-016-9328-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10603-016-9328-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Gillingham & Karen Palmer, 2014. "Bridging the Energy Efficiency Gap: Policy Insights from Economic Theory and Empirical Evidence," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 8(1), pages 18-38, January.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:7:y:2012:i:3:p:254-267 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Yamamoto, Yoshihiro & Suzuki, Akihiko & Fuwa, Yasuhiro & Sato, Tomohiro, 2008. "Decision-making in electrical appliance use in the home," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 1679-1686, May.
    4. Angela Fagerlin & Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher & Peter A. Ubel & Aleksandra Jankovic & Holly A. Derry & Dylan M. Smith, 2007. "Measuring Numeracy without a Math Test: Development of the Subjective Numeracy Scale," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 27(5), pages 672-680, September.
    5. Savannah Wei Shi & Michel Wedel & F. G. M. (Rik) Pieters, 2013. "Information Acquisition During Online Decision Making: A Model-Based Exploration Using Eye-Tracking Data," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1009-1026, May.
    6. Hsee, Christopher K., 1996. "The Evaluability Hypothesis: An Explanation for Preference Reversals between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Alternatives," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 247-257, September.
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:5:p:335-354 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    10. Nina Horstmann & Andrea Ahlgrimm & Andreas Glöckner, 2009. "How Distinct are Intuition and Deliberation? An Eye-Tracking Analysis of Instruction-Induced Decision Modes," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2009_10, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    11. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:2:p:172-184 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils & Quigley, John M., 2013. "Energy literacy, awareness, and conservation behavior of residential households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 42-50.
    13. Oded Netzer & Olivier Toubia & Eric Bradlow & Ely Dahan & Theodoros Evgeniou & Fred Feinberg & Eleanor Feit & Sam Hui & Joseph Johnson & John Liechty & James Orlin & Vithala Rao, 2008. "Beyond conjoint analysis: Advances in preference measurement," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 337-354, December.
    14. Zeng, Lei & Yu, Yang & Li, Jiayang, 2014. "China’s Promoting Energy-Efficient Products for the Benefit of the People Program in 2012: Results and analysis of the consumer impact study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 22-32.
    15. Goldstein, Daniel G. & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2009. "Fast and frugal forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 760-772, October.
    16. Gaspar, Rui & Antunes, Dalila, 2011. "Energy efficiency and appliance purchases in Europe: Consumer profiles and choice determinants," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7335-7346.
    17. Slovic, Paul & Finucane, Melissa L. & Peters, Ellen & MacGregor, Donald G., 2007. "The affect heuristic," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 177(3), pages 1333-1352, March.
    18. Peter Stüttgen & Peter Boatwright & Robert T. Monroe, 2012. "A Satisficing Choice Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 878-899, November.
    19. Jaffe, Adam B. & Stavins, Robert N., 1994. "The energy-efficiency gap What does it mean?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 804-810, October.
    20. repec:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:5:p:420-432 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aldona Kluczek & Patrycja Żegleń & Daniela Matušíková, 2021. "The Use of Prospect Theory for Energy Sustainable Industry 4.0," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-29, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ramos, A. & Gago, A. & Labandeira, X. & Linares, P., 2015. "The role of information for energy efficiency in the residential sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 17-29.
    2. Schleich, Joachim & Gassmann, Xavier & Faure, Corinne & Meissner, Thomas, 2016. "Making the implicit explicit: A look inside the implicit discount rate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 321-331.
    3. Häckel, Björn & Pfosser, Stefan & Tränkler, Timm, 2017. "Explaining the energy efficiency gap - Expected Utility Theory versus Cumulative Prospect Theory," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 414-426.
    4. Laura Abrardi, 2019. "Behavioral barriers and the energy efficiency gap: a survey of the literature," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(1), pages 25-43, March.
    5. F. Knobloch & J. -F. Mercure, 2016. "The behavioural aspect of green technology investments: a general positive model in the context of heterogeneous agents," Papers 1603.06888, arXiv.org.
    6. Samdruk Dharshing & Stefanie Lena Hille, 2017. "The Energy Paradox Revisited: Analyzing the Role of Individual Differences and Framing Effects in Information Perception," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 485-508, December.
    7. Martinovici, A., 2019. "Revealing attention - how eye movements predict brand choice and moment of choice," Other publications TiSEM 7dca38a5-9f78-4aee-bd81-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Wüstenhagen, Rolf & Menichetti, Emanuela, 2012. "Strategic choices for renewable energy investment: Conceptual framework and opportunities for further research," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-10.
    9. A. Peter McGraw & Eldar Shafir & Alexander Todorov, 2010. "Valuing Money and Things: Why a $20 Item Can Be Worth More and Less Than $20," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(5), pages 816-830, May.
    10. Peter Stüttgen & Peter Boatwright & Robert T. Monroe, 2012. "A Satisficing Choice Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 878-899, November.
    11. Swait, J. & de Bekker-Grob, E.W., 2022. "A discrete choice model implementing gist-based categorization of alternatives, with applications to patient preferences for cancer screening and treatment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    12. James Carroll & Eleanor Denny & Ronan C. Lyons, 2020. "Better energy cost information changes household property investment decisions: Evidence from a nationwide experiment," Trinity Economics Papers tep1520, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    13. Filippini, Massimo & Kumar, Nilkanth & Srinivasan, Suchita, 2020. "Energy-related financial literacy and bounded rationality in appliance replacement attitudes: evidence from Nepal," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 399-422, August.
    14. Dalia Streimikiene & Tomas Balezentis & Irena Alebaite, 2020. "Climate Change Mitigation in Households between Market Failures and Psychological Barriers," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-21, June.
    15. Jain, Manisha & Rao, Anand B. & Patwardhan, Anand, 2018. "Appliance labeling and consumer heterogeneity: A discrete choice experiment in India," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 213-224.
    16. Tamara Stotz & Angela Bearth & Signe Maria Ghelfi & Michael Siegrist, 2020. "Evaluating the Perceived Efficacy of Randomized Security Measures at Airports," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(7), pages 1469-1480, July.
    17. Trotta, Gianluca, 2018. "Factors affecting energy-saving behaviours and energy efficiency investments in British households," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 529-539.
    18. repec:cup:judgdm:v:7:y:2012:i:4:p:427-440 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Andersen, Kristoffer Steen & Wiese, Catharina & Petrovic, Stefan & McKenna, Russell, 2020. "Exploring the role of households’ hurdle rates and demand elasticities in meeting Danish energy-savings target," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    20. Chersoni, Giulia & DellaValle, Nives & Fontana, Magda, 2022. "Modelling thermal insulation investment choice in the EU via a behaviourally informed agent-based model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    21. Stephanie Mertens & Ulf J. J. Hahnel & Tobias Brosch, 2020. "This way, please: Uncovering the directional effects of attribute translations on decision making," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(1), pages 25-46, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jcopol:v:40:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10603-016-9328-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.