Measuring the Response to Housing Energy Labels in Japan by Using an Eye-Tracking Experiment.

金沢大学人間社会研究域経済学経営学系This study focuses on energy labels, which are set to be displayed mandatorily in Japanese real estateadvertisements soon. In this study, we conducted eye-tracking experiments to identify effective designelements for energy labels. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that we not only collected data onreaction times and areas of interest (AOIs) using eye tracking, but also conducted a panel analysiscontrolling for individual effects by adding data from a questionnaire survey conducted after theexperiment. Our findings verified that the display of energy labels in real estate advertisements is likelyto lead to improved consumer understanding of energy conservation standards as learning effects. Thissuggests rehearsal effects that invited availability heuristics by appearing repeatedly. Moreover, theresults of the panel analysis suggest that design of energy labels are important on reaction time andnumber of round trips between the AOIs. We compared the two label designs in the experiment, theinformation in the European Union energy label was difficult to read and judge intuitively, and canconclude the rating scale label was more suitable for advertising and readers in Japan. As energy labelshelp with increased consumer awareness regarding energy standards of dwellings and energy saving,an early start to labeling is recommended