This study aimed to examine the antecedent conditions of pluralistic ignorance. We hypothesized that when people perceive a gap between a group member's actual behavior versus preference, they would attribute it to a sort of norm within the group, and conform accordingly. In Study 1, we conducted a longitudinal survey regarding punctuality norm among college students. In Study 2, we conducted a laboratory experiment to examine the phenomenon step-by-step. Participants entered a laboratory in groups of five and were asked to taste and evaluate two kinds of water in rotation. All participants were led to believe that they were fourth in turn to taste the water, and were told that the first three participants had selected the poor tasting water (Water L), hence participants were informed as to which water was of higher quality. As we predicted, the more the participants believed that the prior participants personally preferred the other water in spite of their selection, the more they tended to conform to the majority's behavior and select Water L, because they perceived the group norm should to be followed.
With the growing need for water demand management, several nudge-based interventions have been undertaken from March to September 2019 to guide humans toward the socially desirable behavior of conserving resources and reducing the negative environmental impacts in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, Japan. In this study, we provided two types of visualized feedback to the participating households by applying social norms to their water consumption: one that conceptualized water as a public good, and one that compared the household’s usage to that of others by using a bar chart for eight months. We analyzed the change in water consumption of each household using the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) and found that a nudge that visualized water as a public good was effective in saving water in low-consuming households, whereas a nudge using a bar chart had no impact. In addition, we asked the participants whether the information provided caused any kind of stress after the last feedback. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the nudge method utilized in this study not only does not cause stress among the nudge recipients, but also improved their interest in residential water consumption. Households that received a nudge were less satisfied than the control group because they feel that they were not able to save water.
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