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Persuasive Normative Messages: The Influence of Injunctive and Personal Norms on Using Free Plastic Bags.

De Groot, J. I.M., Abrahamse, W. and Jones, K., 2013. Persuasive Normative Messages: The Influence of Injunctive and Personal Norms on Using Free Plastic Bags. Sustainability, 5 (5), 1829 - 1844 .

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DOI: 10.3390/su5051829

Abstract

In this exploratory field-study, we examined how normative messages (i.e., activating an injunctive norm, personal norm, or both) could encourage shoppers to use fewer free plastic bags for their shopping in addition to the supermarket’s standard environmental message aimed at reducing plastic bags. In a one-way subjects-design (N = 200) at a local supermarket, we showed that shoppers used significantly fewer free plastic bags in the injunctive, personal and combined normative message condition than in the condition where only an environmental message was present. The combined normative message did result in the smallest uptake of free plastic bags compared to the injunctive and personal normative-only message, although these differences were not significant. Our findings imply that re-wording the supermarket’s environmental message by including normative information could be a promising way to reduce the use of free plastic bags, which will ultimately benefit the environment

Item Type:Article
ISSN:2071-1050
Uncontrolled Keywords:normative influence; norms; injunctive norms; personal norms; message framing; sustainable behavior
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:21869
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:21 Apr 2015 11:55
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 13:51

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