No virtue without sacrifice

A NYT environmental blog comments on a study showing that people misperceive which actions are most efficient in terms of reducing energy consumption:

The top five behaviors listed by respondents as having a direct impact on energy savings (turning off the lights, riding a bike or using public transportation, changing the thermostat, “changing my lifestyle/not having children” and unplugging appliances or using them less) yield savings that are far outweighed by actions cited far less often, like driving a more fuel-efficient car (...) buying new bulbs or more efficient refrigerators.

Here is how the authors of the study are trying to explain this:

Relative to experts’ recommendations, participants were overly focused on curtailment rather than efficiency, possibly because efficiency improvements almost always involved research, effort and out-of-pocket costs (e.g. buying a new energy-efficient appliance), whereas curtailment may be easier to imagine and incorporate into one’s daily behaviors without any upfront costs.

I think this explanation is entirely wrong. To me, the results of the study are evidence mostly of the fact that people think of "helping the environment" not in terms of efficiency but in terms of personal moral virtue. Our brains are hardwired such that personal sacrifice is a necessary condition of moral virtue. You are not virtuous, you are not "helping," unless you are doing something that feels like a sacrifice, however small. Note that all of the items on the list of top five things perceived to have the most beneficial impact are things that require a conscious sacrifice on part of the person doing them. Constantly remembering to switch off the lights when you no longer need them feels more like a sacrifice than buying energy-efficient light bulbs, even though the latter helps more than the former. Similarly, most people will feel more like they're helping the Haiti earthquake victims if they personally volunteer to go to Port-au-Prince to dig people from under the rubble than if they donate $500 to Red Cross, again even though the latter helps more than the former.