Advances in electronic technologies have the potential to enable energy efficiency and climate mitigation but may also create climate impacts due to resource and energy use across the product life cycle. These tradeoffs revolve around the way electronics are designed, manufactured, purchased, used, and disposed and the ability to shift these systems toward resource efficiency. A promising strategy for consumer electronics is to facilitate adoption of lightweight, energy‐efficient, multi‐functional devices as replacements for the many single‐function electronic products currently owned. However, consumer preferences and willingness to make this shift remain unclear. Here, a survey of 1,011 adults across the United States demonstrated theoretical potential for material efficiency gains, as respondents indicated willingness to accept a smaller number of multi‐functional devices, such as smartphones, as replacements for specialized electronics, including digital cameras, camcorders, and MP3 players. However, when actually choosing electronics to be used for common functions, such as watching TV, getting directions, surfing the Internet, or writing an email, consumers indicated strong preferences for products with the highest perceived quality for those tasks. Multi‐functional devices such as tablets were only reported to be used for a small number of the functions they can provide and were typically redundant complements to existing products, rather than substitutes. Findings suggest a limit to material intensity reductions via device convergence alone. Dematerialization of this sector will likely require coupled efforts to design multi‐functional products for improved performance while also improving the material and climate footprint of products that consumers are unwilling to replace. This article met the requirements for a gold‐gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges.

中文翻译：

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消费者偏好在降低电子产品材料强度方面的作用

电子技术的进步具有实现能源效率和减缓气候变化的潜力，但是由于整个产品生命周期中的资源和能源使用，也可能产生气候影响。这些权衡围绕着电子产品的设计，制造，购买，使用和处置方式以及将这些系统转移到资源效率上的能力。消费类电子产品的一项有前途的策略是促进采用轻便，节能，多功能的设备来替代目前拥有的许多单功能电子产品。但是，消费者的偏好和做出这一转变的意愿仍不清楚。在这里，对美国1,011名成年人进行的一项调查表明，从理论上讲，可以提高物质效率，受访者表示愿意接受少量的多功能设备（例如智能手机）来替代专用电子设备，包括数码相机，便携式摄像机和MP3播放器。但是，当实际选择用于常见功能的电子设备（例如看电视，导航，浏览Internet或写电子邮件）时，消费者表示对这些任务具有最高感知质量的产品有强烈的偏好。据报道，诸如平板电脑之类的多功能设备仅可用于其提供的少量功能，通常是对现有产品的冗余补充，而不是替代品。研究结果表明，仅通过设备收敛就可以限制材料强度的降低。该行业的非物质化可能需要共同努力，以设计多功能产品以提高性能，同时还要改善消费者不愿更换的产品的材料和气候足迹。本文符合http://jie.click/badges中所述的金JIE数据开放性徽章的要求。