Norms, Nudging, and Sustainable Consumption- An interactive online experiment evaluating the impact of descriptive and injunctive norms on the consumption of sustainability labelled products

Abstract

Sustainable consumption is one important factor in mitigating negative environmental and societal impacts of extensive production and consumption. Behavioural interventions, such as nudging, have been suggested as potential methods in changing customer behaviour. Nudging using social norms has been studied extensively to analyse its impact on proenvironmental behaviour and this study adds to the literature by conducting an experiment evaluating the effect of descriptive and injunctive normative messages on the consumption of sustainability labelled products in an environment where behavioural change is costly. Moreover, the study explores whether the strength of a norm impacts the effectiveness of a nudge. The main results show no significant effect of the four treatments analysed in the study. Further analysis of subgroups of individuals that, based on the theoretical framework, could be more nudgeable show some support for the hypothesis that the strength of a norm matters, at least for descriptive norms. In conclusion, the results do not provide any evidence for the descriptive and injunctive normative messages being successful at generating sustainable behaviour in the environment studied.