Social Behavior

Experiment I - Psychological
Concepts
Social norm
The behaviors and cues within a
society
or group
Descriptive norm
Refers to how most people behave in
a situation
motivate both private and public
actions by informing individuals of
what is likely to be effective or
adaptive behavior in that situation

Experiment I - Method
Hypothesis - The message
conveying the descriptive
norm would result in greater
towel reuse than the industry
standard message.
Each of the 190 hotel rooms
was assigned to one of the
two different messages
Data was collected for over
80 days with 1,058 instances
of potential towel reuse

Help save
the
environme
nt

Standard
message

Join your
fellow
guests in
helping to
save the
environme
nt 75%
of the
guests are
already
reusing
their
towels
Descriptive
norm

Experiment I - Results
The descriptive norm had a significantly higher towel
reuse rate (44.1 %) than the standard environmental
protection approach (35.1%).
Participation (%)
44.10%
35.10%

Standard Environmental message

Descriptive norm

Experiment II - Psychological
Concepts
Provincial norms
Norms which most closely matches one's immediate
settings, situations, and circumstances
Global norms
The shared expectations or standards of appropriate
behavior accepted by states and intergovernmental
organizations that can be applied to states,
intergovernmental organizations

Experiment II - Hypothesis
Individuals are more likely to be influenced by the
norms of their immediate surroundings (provincial
norm) than those of their less immediate surroundings
(global norm).
Individuals are more likely to follow the norms of a
personally unimportant reference group than those of a
more important one when the personally unimportant
reference group is provincial in nature.

Experiment II -Method
Join your fellow guests in helping to save the
environment. In a study 75% of the guests reused their
towels.
Manipulatio
n

I. 75% of the guests- Guest Identity

II. 75% of the guests in this room Same Room
Identity
III. Join your fellow citizens Citizen Identity
IV. 76% of women & 74% of the men Gender Identity

Experiment II Stated Preferences

Experiment II - Results
First Hypothesis: All four
descriptive norm messages
combined (44.5%) fared
significantly better than the
standard environmental
message (37.2%).
Second Hypothesis: The same
room identity descriptive norm
condition resulted in a higher
towel reuse rate (49.3%) than
the other three descriptive
norm conditions combined
(42.8%).