Mental accounting refers to the fact that people create mental budgets to organize their resource use and to create linkages between specific acts of consumption and specific payments. Research on financial decision-making and consumer behaviour shows that these mechanisms can have a large impact on decisions and behaviours, deviating from normative economic principles. Here we introduce a theoretical framework illustrating how mental accounting mechanisms may influence individual decisions and behaviours driving energy consumption and carbon emissions. We demonstrate the practical relevance of mental accounting in the context of designing carbon pricing mechanisms and discuss the ethical dimensions of applying the concept to intervention design. By bridging the mental accounting literature and research in the energy domain, we aim to stimulate the study of the cognitive mechanisms underlying energy-relevant decisions and the development of novel theory-based interventions targeting reductions of energy use and carbon emissions.

心理核算是指人们创建精神预算以组织其资源使用并在特定的消费行为和特定的付款之间建立联系这一事实。对金融决策和消费者行为的研究表明，这些机制可能会对决策和行为产生重大影响，这与规范的经济原则背道而驰。在这里，我们介绍一个理论框架，说明心理核算机制如何影响驱动能源消耗和碳排放的个人决策和行为。我们在设计碳定价机制的背景下证明了心理会计的实际意义，并讨论了将该概念应用于干预设计的道德层面。通过将精神会计文献和能源领域的研究联系起来，