Heterogeneous (Mis)Perceptions of Energy Costs: Implications for Measurement and Policy Design
Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2025 · Sébastien Houde、Erica C. Myers
中文摘要
量化消费者对产品成本错误感知的异质性，对政策设计至关重要。我们以能源情境与庇古税政策设计为例说明这一点。我们采用显示性偏好方法，估计美国家电市场中能源成本感知的非参数分布。我们表明，平均错误感知程度具有误导性——尽管最大份额的消费者能正确感知能源成本，但相当大份额的消费者低估了能源成本，而较小份额的消费者要么显著高估、要么完全忽视能源成本。我们表明，基于平均错误感知设定税收，会与考虑异质性错误感知的最优税产生显著偏离。尽管正确刻画错误感知对于为外部性设定最优庇古税至关重要，但对于设定最优标准则不那么重要。我们发现，标准在很大程度上可以优于税收。标准的优势在于，相对于税收，标准能降低能源运行成本的方差，从而将错误感知造成的扭曲效应内部化。
Abstract
Quantifying heterogeneity in consumers’ misperceptions of product costs is crucial for policy design. We illustrate this point in the energy context and the design of Pigouvian policies. We estimate non-parametric distributions of perceptions of energy costs in the U.S. appliance market using a revealed preference approach. We show that the average degree of misperception is misleading— while the largest share of consumers correctly perceives energy costs, a significant share undervalues them, and smaller shares either significantly overvalues or completely ignores them. We show that setting a tax based on mean misperception deviates substantially from the optimal tax that accounts for heterogeneous misperceptions. While correctly characterizing misperception is crucial for setting optimal Pigouvian taxes for externalities, it is less important for setting optimal standards. We find that standards can largely outperform taxes. Standards’ advantage is they reduce variance in energy operating costs relative to taxes, which internalizes distortionary effects from misperceptions.