The power of social norms

A social norms perspective

In the fight against climate change, depleting resources and the loss of biodiversity, pro-environmental action is needed. No doubt, there is a call for a global regulatory regime and technological change. But does this mean, individual effort/action is immaterial? Not according to evidence that shows that about 70% of CO₂ emissisions are directly or indirectly connected to individual behaviour and household consumption on energy, mobility, food and shelter. There is a powerful yet underused lever to influence behaviour: social norms. The only trouble/difficulty: Pro-environmental behaviour is not yet widespread, it is not the norm. What to do then?

to induce behaviour change? How then, can we leverage social norms/can social norms be employed to promote environmentally beneficial behaviour?

No doubt, these global challenges must be countered on a international level. Efforts have to be made.

Climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity…call for pro-environmental action: Agreed, these global challenges must be met with regulatory and technological change. But does this mean, individual behaviour is irrelevant? Not if evidence shows that about 70% of CO₂ emissions are directly or indirectly connected to individual behaviour/household consumption: energy, mobility, food and shelter. Any policy intervention is only likely to have a lasting impact, when accepted and adhered to by a majority of people. There is a powerful yet underused lever to influence behaviour: social norms. The only caveat: Pro-environmental behaviour is not yet widespread, it is not the norm. How can social norms still be effective and induce behaviour change?

Global warming, depleting resources, and loss of biodiversity…call for pro-environmental action. Agreed these challenges must be met with international regulations and technological change. But does this mean, individual effort/action is immaterial?

Not according to evidence, that shows that about 70% of CO2 emissions are directly or indirectly connected to individual behaviour and household consumption: energy, mobility, food and shelter. Any policy intervention is thus only likely to have a lasting impact, when accepted and adhered to by a majority of people.

There is a powerful yet underused lever to influence behaviour: social norms.

The only trouble: Pro-environmental behaviour is not yet widespread, it is not the norm. What can we do then, to promote it?

Social norms broadly fall into two categories: “is-norms” and “ought-norms”. “Is-norms” (formally: descriptive norms) describe what most other people do. They reflect the actual or typical behaviour of people, without saying whether it is good or bad. “Ought-norms” (formally: injunctive norms), on the other hand, indicate what is generally approved or disapproved in society. Prescriptive in nature, (“you ought to do this“), they hold an implicit moral judgement about what is right or wrong. Although both types of norms are psychologically linked, reasons for conforming are distinct: You follow an “is-norm” and imitate the behaviour of others, because you infer “if most people do this, then it must be wise to do”. In other words, it must be the most effective and adaptive thing to do in this situation. In turn, you follow an “ought-norm”, to get approval from others and to avoid that others will look askance at you when you don’t.

That being said, we commonly underestimate the extent to which our actions are influenced by other people, even if numerous field studies and meta-analyses highlight the power of social influence.

Lifehacks on social norms

#1: Social norms influence our decisions, only when, at the point of decision-making, they are consciously or unconsciously focused. In absence of a “sign” or “hint” that calls the relevant norm to mind, it will likely only play a marginal role in our decisions, outweighed by other considerations, like costs, convenience or personal preferences.

#2: Normative messages or interventions unfold their full impact on their target, only when the behaviour they try to promote, is echoed in the actual behaviour of most other people (i.e. of the reference group). In other words, appealing to a social norm to induce desired action from someone, is only effective, if “ought-norm” and “is-norm” are aligned and show in the same direction. For example: “60% of our customers already use reusable shopping bags. (positive “is-norm”) Join us in reducing plastic waste! (positive “ought-norm”)“

Do as I say, not as I do

In reality, however, there are lots of cases, where the prevalent behaviour in society, is a harmful one. Let’s go back to the question of pro-environmental behaviour: Most of us will agree that a clean, and well-preserved environment is preferred to a littered, polluted one. Still, most of us drive polluting cars (sales of SUVs go mad!). Pro-environmental behaviour, like proper recycling, water or energy conservation, and eco-friendly travelling, on the other hand, are minority behaviours (- which is exactly why there is a strong case for behaviour change!). It would, however, be ineffective, if not counterproductive, to draw people’s attention to the fact that literally no one currently recycles their waste (negative “is-norm”), but then kindly ask to recycle, please! (positive “ought-norm”). What you do, essentially, is delivering two normative messages that contradict each other. The fallacy behind this, is, that it implies, trashing is acceptable – (most people do it)- and there is no motivation whatsoever for the recipient of such message, to start recycling, if they have just been reminded: “no one else does it, plus my effort is pretty vain”.

But, how then, can social norms be employed accurately and effectively to induce pro-environmental behaviour?

Here are four strategies, I devised from current research:

(1) Avoid highlighting harmful behaviour (i.e. the negative “is-norm”) that is currently prevalent. Direct people’s attention to the positive behaviour you want to encourage instead.

(2) Pick a relevant reference group. When you refer to the behaviour of “others”, make sure your target can closely relate to the reference group you picked. The more similar, connected or relatable, the more strongly they will identify with the norms of the group. Social influence effects occur most likely when you refer to “in-group” members or peers. e.g. “Save water! As students of the LSE, we feel responsible for caring for the environment and we do our bit to save water on campus”.

(3) Adapt the scope. Be specific about the location where a certain pro-environmental behaviour is practised and expected from your target (e.g. the residential area, university campus, parking lot), rather than being completely generic about what most other people in society or on the planet do or approve of. However, in some instances, where a harmful behaviour is present at the local, district level only, and not representative of city residents in general, the opposite might hold true. Here you might want to encourage residents of that district, by appealing to the city-wide norm and ask them to join in. Always choose the strategy that best resolves the conflict between actual and expected behaviour.

(4) Communicate a positive trend: Presenting a situation as dynamic (vs. static) is more motivating and empowering, as it emphasizes the possibility to change the status quo. A dynamic pro-environmental norm can convey a positive “is-norm”, even if in absolute terms, you are referring to a minority. e.g. “in the past month, 30% of residents have begun to recycle their waste”, “every year, more and more consumers choose eco-friendly alternatives”.

(5) Use quantifiers with positive polarity. Verbal quantifiers with a positive polarity (e.g. A few, some, many) direct attention to reasons for performing the pro-environmental behaviour in question, while those with a negative polarity (e.g. Few, not many) point to reasons against, – even if in reality they describe exactly the same quantity!

Even if social norms are not as straightforward as you might have guessed, a strategic approach can really boost the effectiveness of pro-environmental interventions!

it may be possible to present
true descriptive norms about a non-prevalent behavior in such a
way that it encourages the behavior in question, through systematically exploiting the linguistic polarity characteristics of verbal
and numerical quantifiers. For example, verbal quantifiers with a
positive polarity (e.g., A few, some, many) of the kind used by
Schultz et al. (2008) draw attention towards reasons for performing
the behavior in question, whereas those with a negative polarity
(e.g., Few, not many, not all) draw attention to reasons against. Thus
A few and Few describe the same quantity

rather than simply communicating what most other people in society do or approve of (the general norm), it might be helpful to focus on a specific local region, city or smaller community.

(4) Raise a norm to a broader level. In some instances, where it appears that a particular neighbourhood or district falls behind the city in implementing pro-environmental action, a general norm might be preferable. In this case, although harmful behaviour is prevalent at a local level, it is not representative of the general effort undertaken by residents of the whole city. Here you might want to encourage residents of the target neighbourhood or district to get involved, by appealing to the city-wide norm and asking them to join in. Raising the norm to a broader level resolves the initial norms conflict between actual and desirable/expected behaviour. Change the unit.

generally done and approved of at the level of the entire city. This means harmful behaviour is on a local level, and unrepresentative of what is generally done and approved of in the city, you might get more people involved in that place, when you appeal to the whole city. be more effective to appeal to the whole citybe helpful to resolve the norms conflict, by appealing to the whole city. When you raise the norm to a broader level, you can re-align “is-norm” and “ought-norm” and strengthen your message. appeal to a broader a local community or neighbourhood for instance something is a minority behaviour in your local community or neighborhood, it might be possible to weaken a norm conflict, by raising the injunctive norm to a broader level. For instance, if you appeal to the whole city. Then the behaviour of the neighborhood might be seen as unrepresentative of what is generally done and approved of, and that might strengthen the normative message, because at a broader level both norms are aligned.  

(4) Reframe your message.

, there is a
strong incentive to use descriptive norms that suggest a high rate of
compliance to a group norm. However, it may be possible to present
true descriptive norms about a non-prevalent behavior in such a
way that it encourages the behavior in question, through systematically exploiting the linguistic polarity characteristics of verbal
and numerical quantifiers. For example, verbal quantifiers with a
positive polarity (e.g., A few, some, many) of the kind used by
Schultz et al. (2008) draw attention towards reasons for performing
the behavior in question, whereas those with a negative polarity
(e.g., Few, not many, not all) draw attention to reasons against. Thus
A few and Few describe the same quantity (Moxey & Sanford, 1993),
but the phrase A few people went to the party because … encourages
production of reasons that explain why people went to the party
(e.g., all their friends were going too), whereas Few people went to
the party because …

Goldstein et al. (2008) relied on a double-positive quantification
strategy that uses positive polarity quantifiers to describe both the
number of people performing the target behavior and the number
of behaviors performed: e.g., “Almost 75% of guests who are asked to
participate in our new resource savings program do help by using
their towels more than once” (italics added). However, consider the
likely response from hotel guests if we described the same behavior
from previous guests as “Almost 75% of guests who are asked to
participate in our new resource savings program do help by using
their towels at most twice”. Here, based on previous research, we
may expect a substantial number of consumers to think of reasons
for not performing this behavior (Teigen, Halberg, & Fostervold,
2007). When paired with valued behaviors, positive polarity
quantifiers may implicitly suggest reasons for performing the
behavior in question thus serving as implicit injunctive norms that
encourage people to perform more of a non-prevalent behavior.

a majority who bought two.
Accordingly, based on our intuitions, we constructed two sets of
candidate “strong” and “weak” descriptive norm formulations that
truthfully characterized the baseline behavior observed in the pilot
study but were expected to suggest respectively a high or a low
proportion of people buying ecological products. All four candidate
strong norms that we pre-tested included the downwardly bounded quantifier at least to accentuate positive polarity, while two of
the candidate weak norms included the upwardly bounded

quantifier at most to emphasize negative polarity, or focused on
those who did not buy ecological products, thus understating the
number of ecological products bought.

“For your
information, 70% of previous participants purchased at least one
ecological product”.

Cialdini (2003) asserts that environmental campaigners often “try to mobilise action against a problem by depicting it as regrettably frequent”: but this strategy can backfire, as it draws people’s attention to the fact that majority of people engage in these harmful behaviours, and so they are acceptable. It can also give people a moral license to continue harmful behaviour or it can feel frustrating to see youre actually the only one trying to be environmentally friendly.

Here is a set of strategies for policy makers wishing to use social norms effectively in a pro-environmental campaign or intervention/ to design an optimal social norms intervention or a pro-environmental campaign:

When the desired behaviour is not prevalent, rather than drawing attention to a negative descriptive norm (e.g. “only few people are currently recycling”), only emphasise the positive injunctive norm or a positive dynamic norm (“in the past month 30% have begun recycling”). Make the injunctive norm salient, when there is no descriptive norm support.

You also need to consider another trade-off: Imagine an environmentally harmful behaviour is currently prevalent. If you pretend in your advertisement campaign that a majority of people is already recycling, while this is not true facts, you diminish the perceived credibility of your ad and credibility of a message influences people’s intention to follow the message. You can still use a norm that does not entirely reflect reality, if you circumvent the credibility issue by appealing to an endorser whom the consumer can easily identify with and who credibly supports/ represents the desired behaviour and environmental cause. However, you need to take into account ethical considerations.

Change the scope of the reference group: On the other hand, in some cases, where for instance something is a minority behaviour in your local community or neighborhood, it might be possible to weaken a norm conflict, by raising the injunctive norm to a broader level. For instance, if you appeal to the whole city. Then the behaviour of the neighborhood might be seen as unrepresentative of what is generally done and approved of, and that might strengthen the normative message, because at a broader level both norms are aligned.  

Reframe: dynamic norms, wording “at most/most”, “few/a few”