Policymakers increasingly use norm-based messages to promote conservation efforts. Despite the apparent success of such strategies, empirical analyses have thus far focused exclusively on short-run effects. From a policy perspective, however, whether and how such strategies influence behavior in the long-run is of equal interest. We partner with a metropolitan water utility to implement a natural field experiment examining the effect of such messages on longer-run patterns of water use. Empirical results are striking. While appeals to pro-social preferences affect short-run patterns of water use, only messages augmented with social comparisons have a lasting impact on water demand.
published by Elsevier. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process-such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms-may not be reflected in this version of the text.
Voting has been described as a contribution to a public good. Are people who vote frequently therefore more likely to contribute to other public goods? Does partisanship affect how likely a person is to engage in these cooperative behaviors? Although surveys suggest that the answer to these questions is "Yes," few empirical studies examine these questions using observed behaviors. We examine them in the context of a large-scale, randomized controlled trial to induce voluntary action in a common-pool resource dilemma. During a drought in the southeastern United States, pro-social messages that encouraged water conservation were randomly assigned to 35,000 out of 106,000 households. Frequent voters in primary and general elections (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) were substantially more responsive to the messages, but there was no detectable difference in the responses of Republican and Democrat households. Our results suggest that internalized pro-social preferences promote action for the public good across behavioral contexts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.