Public estimates of energy use suffer from severe biases. Failure to correct these may hinder efforts to conserve energy and undermine support for evidence-based policies. Here we present a randomized online experiment that showed that home energy perceptions can be improved. We tested two simple, potentially scalable interventions: providing numerical information (in watt-hours) about extremes of energy use and providing an explicit heuristic that addressed a common misperception. Both succeeded in improving numerical estimates of energy use, but in different ways. Numerical information about extremes primarily improved the use of the watt-hours response scale, while the heuristic improved underlying understanding of relative energy use. As a result, only the heuristic significantly benefitted judgements about energy-conserving behaviours. Because understanding of energy use also predicted self-reported energy-conservation behaviour, belief in climate change, and support for climate policies, targeting energy misperceptions may have the potential to shape individual behaviour and national policy support.

公众对能源使用的估计存在严重偏差。无法纠正这些问题可能会妨碍节约能源的努力，并破坏对基于证据的政策的支持。在这里，我们提出了一项随机的在线实验，该实验表明可以改善家庭的能量感知。我们测试了两种简单的，可能具有可扩展性的干预措施：提供有关极端能耗的数字信息（以瓦特小时为单位），并提供一种明确的启发式方法来解决常见的误解。两者都以不同的方式成功地改善了能源使用的数值估算。有关极端情况的数字信息主要改善了瓦特小时响应量表的使用，而启发式方法则改善了对相对能量使用的基础理解。结果，只有启发式方法对节能行为的判断大有裨益。