Collective decision-making under uncertainty: The MPG illusion

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The MPG illusion

An interesting study from the latest issue of Science about people's illusion on fuel efficiency.

The actual relationship between gallons of gas used per 10,000 miles driven as a function of fuel efficiency of car (expressed in MPG) (left figure) is curvilinear. A false belief of the relationship being linear makes people overpay for high MPG cars and undervalue low MPG cars (right figure).

Update: This non-linear relationship explains why "Buy an SIV, Save the planet"

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My name is Shuang Liu and I work for CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences as a research scientist. Three key words that summarize my background are: problem-solving, the science-policy interface, and interdiciplinarity.

Trained as an ecological economist as a PhD student (Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont), I take solving real-world problems as the ultimate goal of my research (and yes, they did tell me publication is also important). So I have been working at the science-policy interface (so far mostly in the areas of ecosystem services and biological invasions) with my knowledge and training in biology, ecology, economics, public participation, and group facilitation.

Looking into the future, what intrigues me most is how we make collective decisions under uncertainty. Just think about our experience so far with GMOs, biological invasions, and of course climate change... This blog records the journal of my research in this direction.