The reliance on symbolically significant behavioral attributes when judging energy consumption behaviors

This research provides evidence for people's susceptibility to the symbolic significance fallacy when judging energy-related behaviors. The fallacy describes people's tendency to rely on symbolically significant behavioral attributes while neglecting other information. Participants were presented with two energy consumer descriptions. One entailed a positive symbolically significant attribute (e.g., driving a Prius) and a negative symbolically neutral attribute (e.g., covering 28,700 km); for the other one, the reverse was true (e.g., driving an SUV and covering 11,400 km). Thereby, the former actually consumed more energy. As expected, the energy consumer with the positive symbolically significant attribute was considered more energy conscious than the one with the negative symbolically significant attribute. The effect even persisted when providing detailed information on energy consumption, enabling an exact calculation, and asking to directly rate energy consumption. This research points to misperceptions in the estimation of energy consumption that could impede adoption of adequate energy-friendly behavior.