Despite constantly using energy and having extensive interactions
with household appliances, people consistently mis-estimate the
amount of energy that is used by home appliances. This poses
major problems for conservation efforts, while also presenting an
interesting case study in human perception. Since many forms of
energy used are not directly perceptible, and since the amount of
energy that is being used by an appliance is often difficult to infer
from appearances alone, people often rely on cues. Some of these
cues are more reliable than others and previous literature has
investigated which of these cues people rely on. However, past
literature has always studied these proximal cues in isolation—
despite the fact that, during real-world perception, people are
always integrating a variety of cues. Here, we investigate how
people rely on a variety of cues, and how individual differences
in the reliance on those cues predicts the ability to estimate home
energy use.