Cognitive Biases in Building Energy Decisions

Maic Rakitta and Jannis Wernery
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Maic Rakitta: Laboratory for Building Energy Materials and Components, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
Jannis Wernery: Laboratory for Building Energy Materials and Components, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-21

Abstract: Research on sustainability in the building sector currently focuses mainly on technical solutions while little attention is given to how behaviour influences the uptake of these solutions. Bounded rationality may have a significant impact on the effective implementation of more sustainable technologies that are already available. However, empirical evidence on the effects of bounded rationality in the building sector, such as cognitive biases, is still lacking. Here, we present an empirical investigation of four cognitive biases in the building environment, namely the framing, anchor, default, and decoy effect. For that, energy-related decisions situations were presented to approximately 270 participants in an online survey. Our results show that awareness of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings can be raised through framing that the willingness to pay more for an energy-efficient home can be increased by presenting it as default, and that the choices can be shifted towards more energy-efficient appliances by using a decoy. The hypothesis that anchoring increases the willingness to pay more for the installation of a solar system could not be supported. These findings decrease the lack of empirical data on cognitive biases in the context of buildings and further indicate the potential of choice architecture in the building environment. The influence of cognitive biases in energy-related decisions should be used to increase the adaptation of sustainable technologies.

Keywords: cognitive biases; bounded rationality; decision behaviour; default effect; decoy effect; framing effect; anchor effect; building energy; sustainability; energy-efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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