Abstract
AbstractNudges based on social norms (norm-nudges) can be compelling behavioral interventions compared with traditional interventions such as taxes and regulations, but they do not work in all circumstances. We tested two empirical norm-nudge frames in an online experiment on taking measures for flood preparedness with large samples of homeowners (N = 1805) in two European countries, to evaluate the possible interactions between norm-nudge effectiveness, individual characteristics, and intercultural differences. We contrasted these norm-nudge treatments with a control and norm-focusing treatment by asking respondents to express their beliefs about what other respondents would do before making a decision relevant to their own payoff. We find no evidence of a treatment effect, suggesting that our social norm-nudges do not affect flood preparedness in the context of a flood risk investment game.
Highlights
Social norms are rules of behavior that are commonly approved by society, while personal norms represent what people believe to be appropriate behavior for themselves (Bicchieri, 2006)
We focus on descriptive social norm-nudges in this article, because our previous elicitation of injunctive social norms showed that only 10% of Dutch homeowners indicate that their peers think that they should invest in damage-reducing measures
Following Hafner et al (2019), who argued that the effect of norm-nudge messages on behavioral intentions in real life may apply only to respondents who are in the position to execute the intention, we restricted the sample to homeowners
Summary
Social norms are rules of behavior that are commonly approved by society, while personal norms represent what people believe to be appropriate behavior for themselves (Bicchieri, 2006). A popular behavioral intervention based on social norms is a norm-nudge (Bicchieri & Dimant, 2019), which. Norm-nudges do not work in all circumstances, and their effectiveness depends on the design of the normnudge (Hummel & Maedche, 2019). There is a risk that a norm-nudge will be ineffective (see, e.g., Chabé-Ferret et al, 2019; Mackay et al, 2019) or even backfire, if not properly tailored to the population and context of interest (Hauser et al, 2018). Norm-nudges may backfire when they provide information about normviolating behavior (e.g., tax evasion), which may lower motivations for compliance (Richter et al, 2018). It is relevant to test different kinds of norm-nudges and empirically assess their effectiveness across contexts
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