Friday 24 July 15:40
- 17:10
Hall: 24 - Room 3 SPT
Chair and Presenter:
Milani Alessandro
Division: Division 4: Environmental Psychology
This symposium brings together presentations examining how social norms function as influential mechanisms to promote pro-environmental behavior across individual, organizational, and societal levels. Often overlooked, social norms are a powerful force shaping environmental action. Drawing on diverse methodologies and cultural contexts, the symposium explores how perceptions of what others do, or what is expected, trigger meaningful changes in sustainable behaviors and attitudes.
Wesley Schultz illustrates how normative influence operates as a powerful yet frequently undetected driver of behavior change. He shows that this underdetection makes norms particularly effective among resistant audiences, fosters durable change by promoting perceived intrinsic motivation, and increases the likelihood of spillovers across related pro-environmental actions.
Kim-Pong Tam investigates how perceptions of global norms, such as climate actions by national governments, increase support for similar domestic policies. Using survey and experimental data from China and the United States, he demonstrates that framing global trends activates normative and efficacy-based pathways to enhance policy support.
Alessandro Milani presents research on Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) norms, showing how organizational actions and priorities shape employees' perceptions of workplace norms. Cross-cultural findings reveal that CER norms affect organizational outcomes and spillovers into pro-environmental behaviors at home, with cultural tightness as a key moderator.
Geertje Schuitema examines how pro-environmental identity moderates the impact of norms on sustainable consumer choices. Across experiments on plant-based diets, she compares motivational congruency and self-determination mechanisms, finding that congruency is more effective for behavioral losses, while self-determination drives gains.
Magnus Bergquist introduces the Sender-Message-Receiver (SMeR) framework, which explains how communicator features, message content, and audience characteristics determine the effectiveness of norm-based climate interventions. The model highlights how underdetection of normative influence reduces resistance and fosters long-term change.
These contributions illustrate social norms' dynamic, context-sensitive power in fostering environmental action and provide a foundation for designing effective, culturally responsive interventions.
