Work

A panacea for improving citizen behaviors? Introduction to the symposium on the use of social norms in public administration

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: Recent years have seen a growth in the use of social norm messages by local and national governments. These messages have been primarily used to induce desired behaviours among the non-compliant minority by pointing to the compliance of the majority. As well as being of considerable theoretical interest, these messages have an unusually high level of empirical and experimental support in government settings. In this paper, we review many of these applied experiments in a bid to understand the workings of social norm messages and, just as importantly, where they do not work as well. We also discuss why this kind of intervention has attracted such an unusually large body of experimental evidence.

Source: Journal of Behavioral Public Administration

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2514536

Authors: Peter John, Michael Sanders, Jennifer Wang

Institutions: King's College London, University College London, The Behavioural Insights Team, Cabinet Office, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Psychology of Social Influence

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: diamond

OpenAlex ID: W2969554369

FWCI: 3.028

Cites: 19

Cited by: 47

Related to: 10