A properly designed volume control affects the sound power output logarithmically, but is labeled linearly (with 1-11 or 0-1 or something like that) to reflect how humans perceive the effect.

People in the field get this wrong all the time — for instance, the volume control on ChromeOS appears to be a linear multiplier, yielding a control with huge perceived steps in the output between 0 and 3, and negligible perceived change in the output between 7 and 10.

I suspect that the confusing design of the dB contributes towards how often such mistakes get made.