Its important to look at the reasons why people's actions change as they gain levels.

At early levels: 3-4 (15-20e) is an average disable so the raid and hack afterward can increase the cost of pvp by 50% and the extra energy could be 15-20 mins worth of production. Additionally, one of the best methods to improving your ship early game are the battle market items which require badges so they are encouraged to collect badges as efficiently as possible. In addition to the time cost to recharge that energy for negligible resource gain, there is the cost of the TMs themselves. When TMs sell for hundreds of millions of credits, each extra raid can cost a low rank ship days if not weeks worth of income they could otherwise gain through sales.

At higher levels: Getting a kill in under 10 hits is considered a lucky find, so the extra energy spent zeroing somebody is often less than the disable and the recharge time on the energy for those raids and hacks can about the same as a low ranker doing just one. Also, any active pvper will have run out of uses for blue and yellow badges by ~200 and have many more levels to save up reds for the auto-blaster upgrade which requires metal points gained through hacking and raiding achievements which currently top out at 1k kills, 5k raids, and 8k hacks meaning multi-hacking is almost a necessity. Add in the fact the value of TMs become a much smaller percentage of their income and eventually produce more than are usable in a day.

Finally its important to notice the actual net loss you're taking being zeroed. if you have performed no offensive actions they may make off with 1/2 an hours worth of production. If you have a high action count they are just taking what you have already taken from other players so you still come out without much loss. And if you were at work or asleep when this happened its likely that those resources would have capped out anyway and you have no loss at all.

In summary: Low levels need badges, high levels need high numbers, and the total cost is really not enough to give yourself an aneurism over.