Normative Appeals Research Articles

Pay Your Taxes! Stay Behind the Yellow Line!: Testing the Normative Appraisal Scale

ABSTRACTOur attention is constantly drawn by messages that propose to us what should (not) be done in a specific place. According to the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), we perceive them through a process (normative appraisal) that is structured in three dimensions, and assesses the degree to which the proposal (a) comes from an institution that ensures compliance, (b) avoids physical or psychological damage, and (c) affords the performance of the main intended action. We review the theoretical underpinnings related to these three dimensions, create a scale to measure them (Normative Appraisal Scale, NAS), and validate it in two studies. Specifically, 2376 citizens in eight countries completed the NAS regarding the norms of paying taxes and not drinking on the street (Study 1), and 1544 subway users completed it regarding two transport norms (Study 2). The analyses supported the three‐dimensional structure of the NAS. Furthermore, the NAS increased the prediction when included along with other predictors: sociological variables; social axioms and values (Study 1); and descriptive norm, injunctive norm, personal control, and formal sanction (Study 2). We suggest that the NAS is useful to assess the actual perception of specific normative appeals and anticipate their effectiveness in influencing peoples’ decisions.

What Moves Public Support for Aid to Ukraine? Issue Attention, Partisanship, and Normative Appeals

Abstract Since 2022, the United States has provided more aid to Ukraine than to any other country, but this policy has become increasingly contentious. Identifying the nature of public support for this aid is critical for public policy, but it also raises central issues for scholars studying foreign policy preferences. I conducted a preregistered survey experiment that varies partisan cues and the content of appeals to support aid to Ukraine. I find that these appeals are strongly conditioned by partisanship and attention to the issue. Among Democrats, normative appeals increase support. Among Republicans, and to a lesser extent, independents, a partisan appeal by Donald Trump reduces support. However, these findings only hold among respondents not following the issue closely. On this high-profile issue in a polarized setting, other appeals largely fail to move attitudes. These results point to a paradox. Those respondents most likely to be moved by appeals for or against aid to Ukraine are also those paying the least attention to the issue, which suggests it will be difficult to move public attitudes on support for aid to Ukraine.

Descriptive or injunctive? The effect of sustainable normative appeals and advertising orientations on environmentally responsible consumption behavior in a collective action perspective

This research investigates the relationship between sustainable normative appeals and advertising orientations on environmentally responsible consumption behavior from a collective action perspective. It is based on attribution theory and construal level theory. The research, which involved four studies (N = 951), found that a descriptive appeal is appropriate for a product-oriented advertisement, and an injunctive appeal is suitable for a cause-oriented advertisement. The match between sustainable normative appeals and advertising orientations encourages caring and responsibility attribution, leading to environmentally responsible consumption behavior. Collective goal attributes also moderated the interaction effect, especially in the abstract collective goal, and only caring mediated the interaction between descriptive appeal and product-oriented advertisement on behavior. This study provides a new perspective and advertising strategies that can be applied to corporate sustainability marketing.

Working-Together Normative Appeals to Promote Pro-Environmental Donations.

Investigating the role of social norms in fostering pro-environmental behaviors is crucial for advancing human efforts toward environmental protection. This study employed a one-way, two-level, between-participants experimental design, focusing on the type of social norm as the independent variable and pro-environmental donations as the dependent variable. This study aimed to explore the impact of working-together normative appeals on pro-environmental donations and to understand the underlying mediating mechanism. In total, 128 Chinese university students participated in an online experiment. The findings indicated that working-together normative appeals significantly increased both the intention to donate and the actual amount of pro-environmental donations in the experimental group compared to those in the control group. Furthermore, the perceived behavioral control and intentions towards pro-environmental donations were identified as mediators in the relationship between social norm categorization and pro-environmental donations. Notably, intentions towards pro-environmental donations alone had a substantial mediating effect. These results underscore the positive influence of working-together normative appeals on pro-environmental donations and offer valuable insights into encouraging active participation in the creation of an eco-friendly society, particularly within a collectivist cultural context.

Hotels re-explored: Experience and influence of reciprocity and social normative appeals

In this paper we report two high-powered and pre-registered experiments, testing the robustness and conceptual development of reciprocity and social norm appeals. Both experiments assessed both psychological processes for complying with these appeals and pro-environmental behavioral intention in tourism settings. In Experiment 1 (N = 2004), participants reported lower psychological reactance levels after learning that the hotel engaged in resource conservation (i.e., indirect homeomorphic reciprocity). No statistically significant effect was obtained for either obligatory motivation, prosocial motivation, skepticism, or behavioral intentions to reuse hotel towels. Importantly, high baseline intention of reusing hotel towels might have limited the effect of appeals. Therefore, we targeted meat consumption in Experiment 2 (n = 2540). Results first showed stronger obligatory and prosocial motivation for all three reciprocity appeals, compared to the standard appeal. No statistically significant results were found for either reactance or skepticism. Finally, after learning that the hotel had made a financial contribution to an environmental organization (i.e., indirect heteromorphic reciprocity) participants showed reduced meat consumption intentions compared to the standard appeal. Overall, the results provide initial evidence for conceptually refining the norm of reciprocity to encourage pro-environmental behaviors and for understanding the underlying psychological processes.

Customer misbehavior in access-based mobility services: An examination of prevention strategies

Customer misbehavior in access-based mobility services such as car sharing and public transport deteriorates the quality and profitability of business models. Basing on organismic integration theory, we propose that service providers can use external regulation or implement introjected actions to reduce customer misbehavior. In two mobility contexts differing in terms of their anonymity dimensions, we test the proposed effects of these two prevention strategies. An 2 × 2 × 2 online experiment with users of public transport (high personal anonymity) and car sharing (high interpersonal anonymity) shows that introjective actions (i.e., normative appeals) and external regulation (i.e., surveillance) are associated with intended consequences regarding misbehavior and motivation to co-create, but also imply unintended consequences (e.g., privacy concerns, negative word-of-mouth, and reduced usage intention). The combined use of both strategies usually proves not to be advantageous, so that the provider actions should be carefully selected depending on the given service setting.

The Effectiveness of Consume-less Appeals in Social Marketing

Consume-less appeals in social marketing can help reduce the lavish consumption in wealthy countries, which poses a major threat to the climate. This study experimentally examines the effectiveness of three different types of consume-less appeals (informative, social normative, and emotional appeals) on participants’ actual spending levels during a real shopping trip compared to a control group (no appeal). In addition, the study tests whether these appeals evoke negative rebounds (in terms of post-purchase climate donation) or positive rebounds (in terms of accepting post-purchase material giveaways). A field experiment in a grocery store in Germany with 170 participants shows that social normative and the emotional appeals reduce actual shopping spending. Informative and social normative appeals increase donations, and emotional appeals reduce the items of taken giveaways. The findings further support certain indirect impacts of the consume-less appeals on rebounds in terms of spending levels.

The impact of normative appeals and affective priming on public service announcements (PSAs) – a moderating role of self-construals

PurposeIt is believed that the effectiveness of public service announcements (PSAs) in persuading recipients to engage in the advocated behavior may be influenced by the content of PSAs, the recipient and the context in which the recipient is exposed to the PSA. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the persuasive process of PSAs with respect to these three aspects. Specifically, how the normative appeals used in PSA, affective priming and self-construals of recipients influence the recipients' behavioral intention is investigated.Design/methodology/approachBetween-subject experiments were conducted to collect data. The proposed hypotheses were verified by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Process macro.FindingsResults show that participants with sad emotional experiences exhibit significantly higher behavioral intention after exposure to PSA compared to those with joy primed. However, the difference in behavioral intention between participants with guilt and neutral emotional experiences was insignificant. Concerning normative appeals, descriptive norms are more persuasive than injunctive norms. In addition, participants' self-construals moderate the relationship between normative appeals and behavioral intention.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this study selected a group of college students as participants and used “Empty Your Plate” campaign as stimulus. Future research should test this mechanism with different samples. Second, this study only tested the effect of print advertising. Future research may examine whether these findings still work with advertisement in different formats. Moreover, future research should investigate the impact of priming guilt that is related to the PSA themes on PSAs' persuasive outcomes. Finally, this study only explored the moderating role of self-construals. Other personal traits were not investigated in current study need to be further explored.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study provide a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence the effectiveness of PSA and have practical implications for PSA practitioners. Firstly, descriptive norms can be used more frequently to improve the effectiveness of PSAs. Secondly, negative emotion exerts a positive influence on persuasive outcomes, so PSA practitioners can arrange media planning more rationally. Furthermore, they can adapt their normative appeals to the self-construal characteristics of their primary audiences to achieve their communication goals more effectively. This study reveals the effectiveness mechanism of PSA in the Chinese context, and thus meets practical needs.Social implicationsThis research will help improve the effectiveness of PSAs to protect the public interest and alleviate social problems by optimizing media planning strategies and increasing the willingness of viewers to change their behavior.Originality/valueThis study enriches theory in PSAs about persuading individuals to engage in prosocial behaviors and provides evidence from China that is rarely seen. In addition, this study contributes to optimizing PSA practice by restoring the actual PSA delivery context in the experimental situation.

Encouraging Individual Contributions to Net-Zero Organizations: Effects of Behavioral Policy Interventions and Social Norms

To contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of climate-friendly organizational behavior, we study the potential of behavioral policy interventions and social norms to foster individual contributions to organizational decarbonization initiatives. We investigate the effects of different types of behavioral policy interventions (default nudges vs. short-term boosts) in isolation and when they are combined with normative appeals to adopt climate-friendly behaviors in an organizational context. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, we find that default nudges generally induced higher individual contributions to organizational carbon compensation programs than short-term boosts. Moreover, injunctive social norm information decreased the effectiveness of both types of behavioral interventions but affected the effectiveness of short-term boosts to a stronger extent than the effectiveness of default nudges. Contributing to the nascent literature on motivating climate change mitigating behaviors in organizational contexts, we additionally explore whether factors such as personality traits, pro-social and pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, and the degree of organizational identification exert an influence on the effectiveness of the interventions and provide qualitative insights into participants’ reasoning for their decisions.

Towards a normative diagnosis tool in an organizational context: Applying the Evaluative Model of the Normative Appeals

Based on the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), we designed a diagnosis tool that allows forecasting the extent to which employees may comply with a set of norms. We first performed two cross-sectional studies to apply the tool within a general sample of workers (Study 1, N = 382) and within a sample of employees of a specific organization (Study 2, N = 82). Two months later we tested in the same organization (Study 3, N = 80) whether the willingness to comply with a set of normative appeals was aligned with the diagnosis generated in Study 2. The results support the validity of the tool to diagnose the perception of and willingness to comply with normative appeals.

Green CSR Communication to Internal Audiences: The Persuasive Power of Normative Appeals to Employees’ Green Behaviors

Given the increasing attention being paid to companies’ microlevel green efforts, this study aims to provide insights into green corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication targeting internal audiences (i.e., employees). Building on the social identity theory and group engagement model, this research examines the persuasive power of two types of social norms—descriptive and injunctive—in green CSR messages. Also, it investigates the underlying mechanism of individuals’ green behavioral decision making at work. Across two studies, results demonstrate that a descriptive norm message is more effective than a standard or injunctive norm message to enhance employees’ intentions to adopt green actions, engage in the company’s green programs, and help their colleagues to perform green behaviors. Additionally, a descriptive norm message advances three antecedents of motivation—expectancy, instrumentality, and valence—which in turn positively influence green behavioral decisions. This research contributes to developing the literature stream of green message framing by targeting a specific internal audience group and provides empirical implications for practitioners.

Investigating Tax Compliance with Mixed-Methods Approach: The Effect of Normative Appeals Among the Firms in Latvia

Investigating Tax Compliance with Mixed-Methods Approach: The Effect of Normative Appeals Among the Firms in Latvia

Sustainability as a Moral Discourse: Its Shifting Meanings, Exclusions, and Anxieties

As sustainability gains popularity in public discourse, scholars have noted its diverse uses, multiple meanings, and contradictory outcomes. This paper explores how the current proliferation of the concept of sustainability stems in part from its varied normative appeals, which in turn motivate, legitimate, and unsettle its diverse mobilizations. As the concept of sustainability calls for an extension of moral horizons beyond the immediate here and now, this redrawing of moral boundaries has simultaneously produced new externalities as well as enduring anxieties and responses within these moral bounds themselves. Drawing on ethnographic and historical materials, we argue that sustainability’s moral boundaries have become both an object of scholarly critique and their own productive site of anxiety and negotiation. Questions about sustainability’s moral horizons and externalities often surface in the concept’s public deployment itself. We suggest that these tensions can be made visible by attending to the intersections between sustainability and a broader range of moral concerns at work.

Business norm versus norm-nudge as a contract-enforcing mechanism: Evidence from a real marketplace

We design a natural field experiment to examine the impacts of norm-based interventions in enhancing honesty in a large decentralized marketplace fraught with contractual breaches owing to individual dishonesty. Sellers in fish markets of Kolkata, India, frequently cheat on the weight of the fish purchased via bilateral bargaining over price. We approach this marketplace and make two interventions: triggering a business norm driven by sellers’ adherence to a superstitious belief and enacting a norm-nudge in the form of moral suasion. Our design exploits a within-seller design whereby experimenter-buyers make scripted one-time purchases. We discover that the sellers behave strikingly honestly when the superstitious business norm is made salient. In contrast, moral suasion significantly decreases dishonesty, but its effect is markedly weaker than the superstition-based business norm. Our results suggest that direct normative appeals have the potential to make substantial headway to mitigate fraud in credence good markets where fraud is hard to detect due to information asymmetry.

How normative appeals influence pro-environmental behavior: The role of individualism and collectivism

The relationship between social norms and pro-environmental consumer behavior is well established, but what moderates this norm-sustainability relationship is much less clear. Previous studies reported inconclusive results regarding the effects of culture. This paper aims to shed light on the reported discrepancies by conducting an in-depth investigation on the effect of two central cultural dimensions, individualism, and collectivism, both on a macro (national culture) and a micro (individual self-construal) level. Specifically, the normative influence on pro-environmental behavioral intentions is analyzed for two different countries, the US and China, and insights are provided into the importance of descriptive and injunctive normative appeals in relation to the activated self-construal level. The quantitative results confirm that injunctive and descriptive normative appeals are stronger motivators of pro-environmental behavioral intentions in collectivistic (e.g., China) than in individualistic (e.g., the US) cultures. To clarify the discrepancies in previous research on norm-sustainability, how the effect of injunctive and descriptive normative appeals changes depending on the activated selfconstrual level in different cultures is demonstrated. The findings from this study are important from a theoretical perspective in that they improve the understanding of the effects of social norms on pro-environmental behavior. From a managerial perspective, it is demonstrated how individualism and collectivism on the one hand, and selfconstrual on the other hand, separately and in combination, can strengthen the effect of normative appeals on pro-environmental behavioral intentions. In conclusion, the study also identifies some promising new research avenues.

Shaming of Tax Evaders: Empirical Evidence on Perceptions of Retributive Justice and Tax Compliance Intentions

Although naming-and-shaming (shaming) is a commonly used tax enforcement mechanism, little is known about the efficacy of shaming tax evaders. Through two experiments, this study examines the effects of shaming tax evaders on third-party observers’ perceptions of retributive justice and tax compliance intentions, and whether the salience of persuasion of observers moderates these relationships. Based on insights from defiance theory, the message learning model, and persuasive communications, this study predicts and finds that shaming evaders increases observers’ tax compliance intentions. Furthermore, the results show that higher persuasion, which includes sanction and normative appeals, affects observers’ tax compliance intentions. This study also suggests that shaming has a positive effect on perceptions of retributive justice. Importantly, the results reveal that perceptions of retributive justice in shaming punishment mediate the effect of shaming on tax compliance intentions. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Coping with Digital Extortion: An Experimental Study of Benefit Appeals and Normative Appeals

Digital extortion has emerged as a significant threat to organizations that rely on information technologies for their operations. Using human subject experimentation, we study the effectiveness of message appeals in encouraging defenders to adopt two mitigation strategies, investment in security and refusal to pay ransoms, to digital extortion threats. We explore two types of appeals, benefit and normative, for this purpose. We find that the decisions of the defenders (representing any organization that can be a potential victim) deviate from the predictions of game theory. However, given the strategic interactions between the defenders and the attacker as well as noisy decision-making behaviors, it is challenging to untangle the influence of the appeals on the defenders. We develop a structural model based on the quantal response equilibrium framework to measure how message appeals change the defenders’ utilities of investment and payment refusal. Although the interventions may be successful in increasing the utilities of investment and/or payment refusal, their impacts on investment rate and payment rate are mitigated by the attacker reducing ransoms. Thus, it is challenging for an intervention to significantly boost a community’s investment rate or to suppress the ransom payment rate. We characterize how security outcomes of a community (including expected ransom, attack rate, investment rate, and payment rate) vary with the defenders’ utilities of investment and pay refusal. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

Dissecting the dimension of protection: Caligae and Scutum in the evaluative model of normative appeals

A normative appeal indicates that one should (or should not) do a certain action in a concrete situation. According to the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), willingness to comply with these messages depends on an appraisal formed by two dimensions: formality and protection. In this work we center on the dimension of protection, proposing that it can be divided into two components: avoiding physical or psychological damage (scutum) and affording the performance of the main intended action (caligae). We conducted two studies to test this twofold meaning of protection. In Study 1 (N = 525), we manipulated the coherence of regulatory focus (promotion vs. control vs. prevention) with salience of the components of protection (caligae vs. control vs. scutum). In Study 2 (N = 513), we separately measured the perception of each component referred to an actual normative appeal (i.e., “To get into a class punctually”). The results showed that the manipulated salience and the measured perception of caligae and scutum elicits (Study 1) and predicts (Study 2) higher willingness to comply with normative appeals. Theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.

Normative appeals motivate people to contribute to collective action problems more when they invite people to work together toward a common goal.

A common method to promote behavior change, particularly in contexts related to collective action, is to reference a social norm and ask people to comply with it. We argue that such appeals will be more effective when they couch the norm as an invitation to work with others toward a common goal. In six experiments, we found that working-together normative appeals, which invited people to "join in" and "do it together," increased interest in (Experiments 1, 4, and 5) and actual charitable giving (Experiment 2), reduced paper-towel use in public restrooms (Experiment 3), and increased interest in reducing personal carbon emissions (Experiment 6). By contrast, normative-information appeals, which included the same normative information but no reference to working together, did not affect interest or behavior. Mediation analyses suggest that working-together normative appeals were more effective because they fostered a feeling in participants that they were working together with others, which increased motivation, while inducing less social pressure, which undermined effectiveness. Results show how the very collective nature of collective action problems can be leveraged to promote personal behavior change and help solve societal problems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Could visual cues moderate the normative influence in promoting energy conservation? A perspective from the construal level

The socially normative influence on promoting energy conservation has received increasing support; however existing studies have largely ignored the potential impact of different visual cues in normative prompts. This current study examined the moderating role of visual cues on the normative influence in promoting energy conservation from a novel perspective of the construal level. The results of an experiment and a field study on campus show that the persuasiveness of descriptive normative appeal (i.e., what most others commonly do) tends to be more robust than injunctive appeal (i.e., what is socially approved). Moreover, there was a significant interaction effect between the construal level of visual cues and normative appeal. When presented with a high-construal-level visual cue (e.g., a light bulb with a green leaf in it), the descriptive (vs. injunctive) normative appeal could stimulate higher energy-saving intentions while both descriptive and injunctive normative appeals can positively affect actual energy-saving behavior. In contrast, when presented with a low-construal-level visual cue (e.g., an outstretched finger turning off a light switch), both descriptive and injunctive normative appeals can elicit higher energy-saving intentions; furthermore the descriptive (vs. injunctive) normative appeal is more effective in promoting actual energy-saving behavior; and, interestingly, the injunctive normative appeal could induce a negative effect. These results indicate a clear behavior-intention incongruence in response to injunctive normative appeals with different construed visual cues. Taken together, this research provides new support for the focus theory of normative conduct and the construal level theory and straightforward practical ways to promote energy conservation.