Effect of energy efficiency labels on household appliance choice in China: Sustainable consumption or irrational intertemporal choice?

Energy consumption has caused severe environmental problems, such as climate change and air pollution. The energy efficiency label is an environmental information policy that provides consumers with energy consumption information of products to change consumers’ choices and guide consumers to green consumption. Current evaluations mainly focus on consumers’ purchase intention toward energy efficiency labels through questionnaire survey and simulation experiment. Our study paper used the real purchase data on China's largest online sales platform to explore consumers’ energy-efficiency home appliance purchase behaviors. This paper found that the energy efficiency labeling policy does not promote consumers’ green consumption behavior, an increase of energy efficiency grade raises the sales of refrigerator by 24.47%, however, the price of the product can negatively regulate the relationship between the energy efficiency grade and the sales. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that when the product price is in the low-price range, consumers will choose high energy-consuming household appliances; only for consumers who purchase mid-to-high-priced products, energy efficiency labeling policies played a guiding role in green consumption. This will cause the energy-saving products more expensive, and consumers are less willing to buy energy-saving products resulting in an energy efficiency paradox. Through further analysis of questionnaire survey data, the results indicate that the energy efficiency paradox is not caused by rational factors, but irrational intertemporal choices. Therefore, accurate assessment of the effect of energy efficiency labels is crucial to promote consumers’ green consumption behavior and mitigate climate change.