Follow or not? Descriptive norms and public health compliance: Mediating role of risk perception and moderating effect of behavioral visibility

• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1040218
• Publication Date: 2022-11-18T14:42:40Z
• Authors: Shuwei Zhang; Yan Wang; Yujie Wei
• Keywords: Moderation; Social norms approach; Descriptive research

In a pandemic context, public health events are receiving unprecedented attention, and identifying ways to enhance individual compliance behaviors has become an urgent practical problem. Considering that decisions susceptible group members' descriptive norms provide social information about the typical of others, we focused on effects properties reference groups behaviors. We also investigated mechanism with risk perception as mediator applicable condition behavioral visibility moderator. Through 2 × between-subject survey experiment 529 subjects, demonstrated (1) compared negative norm, positive norm was more effective in promoting behaviors; (2) distal proximal significantly promoted (3) effect property weakened treatment norm; (4) partially mediated association between fully interaction negative-proximal individuals perceived risk, thus effectively nudging their (5) low-visibility behaviors, were stronger for high-visibility (6) had weaker terms theoretical significance, refined study promote application policy. Moreover, new model constructed this explains conditions terms, implications designing intervention programs nudge