No abstract

The usefulness of conveying descriptive norms (“this is what most people do”) for prosocial purposes such as environmental conservation and charitable giving has recently been called into question. Two experiments (N = 748) evaluated the hypothesis that descriptive norms increase people's intentions to donate to charity. Overall, the results supported this hypothesis. Another aim was to examine the robustness of the local norm superiority effect that proposes that the local norms of one's immediate environment are superior to other descriptive norms (global and social identity norms). This hypothesis was not supported. The results suggest that differences between different types of norms are likely to be small.