Definition
Social norms play an important role in both preserving the status quo and fostering change to a more sustainable consumption pattern (see Aasen et al., 2024). The term “social norm” generally refers to informal norms as opposed to formal, codified norms such as legal rules (Bicchieri et al., 2023). Social norms are functional in regulating social life and they especially evolve when individual actions cause negative side-effects for others. In these cases, social norms serve the function of restraining egoistic impulses in favor of collective outcomes. Social norms imply that (certain) people should perform or not perform a specific behavior.
A social norm is a behavioral rule for a situation (or type of situation) that lives up to two criteria: a sufficiently large share of the population (1) knows the rule and knows that it applies to this particular type of situation and (2) prefers to conform to the rule in this type of situation (Bicchieri et al., 2023). The second criterion implies that most people acknowledge the need to cooperate for the common good and that they therefore prefer to cooperate. However, a person’s preference to cooperate disappears if they believe that (a) an insufficient number of others will conform to the rule in the situation(s) or that (b) an insufficient number of others expect them to conform to the rule in the situation(s) – which is an essential mechanism that potentially inhibits the adoption of sustainable lifestyles. Due to the temptation to defect, some individuals may need the belief that others expect them to conform to be backed by the fear of sanctions in case of failure to conform. Others may just conform because they accept the legitimacy of others’ expectations and feel an obligation to fulfill them.
History
Social norms have been extensively studied across the social sciences: first, by sociologists such as Durkheim and Parsons focusing on the social functions of social norms and how they motivate people to act; and later, by anthropologists, economists, legal scholars, and philosophers, with each discipline adding their unique perspective to the understanding of social norms (for an elaborate account of historical trends in and the current status of social norms research, see Bicchieri et al., 2023).
It is now common in social norms research, in general and specifically about sustainable consumption, to distinguish between beliefs about what most people do, often termed descriptive norms, and beliefs about what others expect one to do, often termed injunctive norms (Helferich et al., 2023). Notice that what matters in this connection is not other people’s objective behavior or expectations, but the individual’s subjective perception of these realities. Reflecting this, empirical research often refers to individual beliefs about others’ expectations as perceived or subjective social norms. Although they are equally subjective, such qualifiers are usually not added when referring to descriptive norms.
It follows from the two conditions mentioned in connection with the definition of social norms that individuals will not prefer to conform to the social norm in a particular situation if either their descriptive or injunctive norm for doing so is weak. Hence, if one of them is weak, the other is of little consequence. Box 57.1 summarizes a field study on the joint impact of communicating injunctive and descriptive norms on water conservation in a shower room.
Box 57.1 Example of a descriptive norm intervention
Save Water: Turn off the water when you soap up! A descriptive norm intervention in a shower room
California struggles with water shortage and has for decades appealed to its citizens to save water. For example, at educational institutions, a common tool is to put up posters in shower rooms, appealing to users to save water by turning off the water while soaping up. Around 1980, social psychologist Elliott Aronson and his team registered compliance with such an (injunctive norm) appeal in a shower room at the University of California Santa Barbara and found it to be only about 5%. Then they conducted a simple experiment to test the effect of being exposed to others complying with the appeal. In one condition, they had one and in a second condition two research assistants standing under a shower with their back to the door, apparently after having finished sport. When somebody entered, they would turn off the water and start soaping up. And then they would register if the person or persons entering the shower room would do the same during their shower. The effect was amazing! When one person demonstrated compliance with the appeal, compliance among those entering increased to 50% and when two persons did so, compliance was nearly 70%. This illustrates, first, that it is often not sufficient that people know a social norm and that it applies to them in a given situation. Second, it illustrates that when knowledge of the injunctive norm is combined with evidence (in this case observations) that others comply with the norm, most people comply.
Source: Aronson, E., & O’Leary, M. (1982). The relative effectiveness of models and prompts on energy conservation: A field experiment in a shower room. Journal of Environmental Systems, 12, 219–224
Different Perspectives
In sociology, norm internalization – or the formation of a personal norm – is seen as a social process where society imprints itself upon the individual. A key feature of such socialization is to create coherence between individuals and society. Socialization can therefore be seen as a way to maintain a certain social order, which is relevant to consider when thinking about the consumer society and a transition away from it.
In social psychology, the focus is mostly on how what others do (a descriptive norm) or expectations of negative reactions from others (an injunctive norm) influence people’s actions (Bergquist et al., 2019). Here, it is an empirical question of whether a social norm is internalized and becomes a personal norm and how internationalization boosts its behavioral impact, for example, regarding environmentally significant behaviors (Helferich et al., 2023). The strength of norm effects depends on both personal factors, such as the relationship between the norm and core values or social identities, and situational factors, such as the salience of negative consequences of one’s actions or inactions and of the norm itself (see Box 57.1).
Application
Most people meet situations where acting to the benefit of society conflicts with their own narrow self-interest. It is more convenient, for instance, to throw litter in the street than to search for a waste bin. It is more convenient to put all one’s household waste in the same garbage bin than to source-separate it and bring recyclable fractions to designated collection points. It is usually cheaper and often also more convenient to ignore possible environmental or ethical qualities of consumer products. Hence, although it can be safely assumed that most people prefer a clean environment, that their garbage is recycled, and that the products they buy live up to certain environmental and ethical standards, there is a temptation to litter, to not sort one’s garbage, and to ignore possible environmental or ethical problems related to products we buy. However, if everybody behaves in this way, everybody will be worse off than if everybody restrains oneself, for the benefit of the common good. Strong, often internalized, social norms can explain why many – sometimes most – people restrain their egoistic impulses in cases such as these.
In practice, it is difficult to disentangle the influence of different types of norms because they are positively and often strongly correlated. What most people approve of is usually also what most people do. At the individual level, injunctive and descriptive norms may converge because other people’s behavior serves as a cue to what is expected of the individual. This mechanism is likely to be strongest for behaviors that are readily observed by others, such as traveling behaviors and to some extent shopping behaviors (and sometimes showering behavior, see Box 57.1). A positive correlation between descriptive and injunctive norms may also be produced by the reverse inference, which is that we expect that most others conform to the injunctive norm. This mechanism may explain the convergence of the two types of norms even for behaviors in the private sphere, such as avoiding food waste or taking shorter showers at home.
Studies using different methods, including surveys, lab experiments, and field experiments have confirmed the impact of both injunctive and descriptive norms on environmentally relevant behavior, such as red meat consumption, littering, recycling, and water conservation. This has also led to “norm nudging” becoming a popular public policy tool (see Choice Editing, Green Nudging). The few studies testing the proposition that descriptive and injunctive norms interact synergistically to promote cooperation generally support the proposition.
For norms to change, some individuals must start the process as a new type of social pressure cannot establish itself spontaneously (Aasen et al., 2024). Rather, it is an evolving process, which originates among individuals who opt for new norms, and which may lead to societal norm changes to the extent others follow suit. The process may at some stage become self-perpetuating, when a point is reached where the new norm has become “how things are or should be done”. This point is increasingly referred to as a “social tipping point”.
Further Reading
Aasen, M., Thøgersen, J., Vatn, A., & Stern, P.C. (2024). The role of norm dynamics for climate relevant behaviour: A 2019–2021 panel study of red meat consumption. Ecological Economics, 218, 108091. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108091.
Bergquist, M., Nilsson, A., & Schultz, W.P. (2019). A meta-analysis of field-experiments using social norms to promote pro-environmental behaviors. Global Environmental Change, 59, 101941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101941.
Bicchieri, C. (2023). Norm nudging and twisting preferences. Behavioural Public Policy, 7, 914–923. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2023.5.
Bicchieri, C., Muldoon, R., & Sontuoso, A. (2023). Social norms. In E.N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Winter 2023 ed. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/social-norms (accessed: 8 January 2025).
Helferich, M., Thøgersen, J., & Bergquist, M. (2023). Direct and mediated impacts of social norms on pro-environmental behavior. Global Environmental Change, 80, 102680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102680.