How Social Norms Messaging Reduced Energy Usage by up to 1.72 kWh/Day

As early as the 1970s, behavioral research has shown that social norms encourage behavior and influence it significantly. However, many of these studies began to show that social norm marketing campaigns that used descriptive norms had the potential to increase the undesirable behaviors they sought to reduce. This research team sought to integrate both descriptive and injunctive norms into their messaging to test this behavioral “boomerang effect” in the context of reducing energy usage. To do so, they measured the energy usage of 290 households multiple times over a few weeks, with half in the descriptive-norm-only condition and the other half in the descriptive-plus-injunctive-norm condition. In the descriptive-only condition, homes that were initially below the average consumed more energy and those who were above average consumed less. In the descriptive-plus-injunctive-condition, homes with below-average energy usage maintained usage levels, and homes with above-average usage reduced their consumption.