How could you use social norms and conformity to promote sustainable behavior on campus or in town?

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Social norms are another key determinant of behavior. People are likely to do what they

see other people doing. example; They found that French armers who used sustainable practices were influenced more by social norms than by their own environmental awareness. Such conformity is often rational. Other people may have knowledge that we ourselves lack; by imitating the behaviors of others with more experience, we take advantage of their knowledge. If my neighbor establishes a backyard wildlife habitat, I not only learn that it is a possible and perhaps acceptable thing to do, I also get procedural information about how to do it. In addition, human society rewards conformity. Because we tend to like people who behave the same way we do and dislike those who deviate, social support is more available to those who conform than to those who do not. A field experiment by Nolan demonstrated the power of social norms in affecting sustainable behavior. Among residents in a California town, a message describing the actual. the energy use of a typical homeowner was more effective in reducing energy use than a message based on environmental protection, social responsibility, self-interest, or merely behavioral information. Interestingly; a survey of (different) residents showed that they described social norms as the least important reason to conserve, citing environmental protection and benefits to society as the primary reasons. People are not always aware of the explanations for their own behavior. Norms can be effective for curtailment behavior, behavioral choices, and technology choices, but it is easier to observe what someone does than to be aware of what someone is NOT doing. Promoting Sustainable Behavior (the products that are not purchased, the car trips that are foregone). Some effort may be needed to highlight pro-environmental norms. It may be possible to highlight information about curtailment behaviors by describing them in more active terms: for example, "I reduced my gas use by 15% by shopping once a week instead of twice." Normative information can be obtained through direct observation of behavior (modeling) or through descriptive information: for example, "87% of Americans have donated to an environmental organization." Targeting influential individuals to serve as models may be an efficient way of using norms to change behavior. Hopper and Nielsen (1991), for example, used block leaders to prompt and encourage recycling. Compared to a group that only received information or information plus prompts, the participants who had a block leader showed personal norms with increased support for recycling. These norms, in turn, predicted recycling behavior. descriptive information about norms can be conveyed unintentionally, with potentially negative effects on sustainable behavior. In a classic study, Bator and Cialdini (2000) looked at public service announcements (PSAs) designed to reduce littering in a national park. Some of these PSAs included the unintentional message that littering is common. Bator and Cialdini showed that a PSA describing littering as normative, though. undesirable, was less effective than an alternative statement that avoided the normative message. Many pro-environmental messages suffer from the same problem: while deploring thecurrent state of the environment, they suggest that it is normal to engage in anti-environmental behavior. Cialdini and his students have effectively demonstrated the power of social norms to effect positive change in the proportion of hotel guests who reuse their towels. The researchers compared the standard message, "Help save resources for future generations" with one that evoked a descriptive norm, "75% of guests who stayed in this room used their towels more than once." Whereas a modest 30% of guests reused their towels after the first message, nearly 50% reused towels in response to the second message. Pairing descriptive with injunctive norms (e.g., "many of our guests value conservation") was even more effective than either message alone. Werner examined some of the processes by which social norms operate.