The Power of Social Norms to Change Behavior

From the Marshall Memo #454

In this intriguing Harvard Business Review article, Arizona-based author/consultant Steve Martin describes research demonstrating that the tough approach to getting people to fulfill obligations – pay their taxes, shell out for overdue bills, show up for doctors’ appointments – is less effective than softer approaches capitalizing on social norms. [How might these insights apply to dealing with students and parents in K-12 schools?]

• In 2009, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (in Britain) tried the following language in place of the usual threats of interest charges, late fees, and legal action: “We collect taxes to make sure that money is available to fund the public services that benefit you and other UK citizens. Even if one person fails to pay their taxes it reduces the services and resources that are provided.” Another round of letters said, in part: “Over 93% of citizens living in your town pay their tax on time.” These language changes raised the collection yield from 57 to 86 percent. Combined with some best practices borrowed from the private collections industry, the agency collected £5.6 billion more in overdue revenue than it had the previous year. The message about 95% of citizens in a town got the highest return rate (83%) – more than a message about on-time taxpayers in their postcode (79%) and among UK citizens (73%). The more local, the better.

• In hotel bathrooms, changing the sign on re-using towels from an emphasis on the environmental benefits to a message saying that the majority of guests do re-use towels resulted in a 26 percent increase in re-use, saving thousands of dollars in laundering and delivery costs. Changing the sign so it said people who stayed in that room reused their towels brought about a further increase in re-use.

• In Britain’s National Health Service, patients skip 6 million appointments a year, costing £700 million in lost revenue. Martin conducted a study in which he tracked data on three successive interventions. First, receptionists got a verbal commitment from patients to call if they had to cancel an appointment: “Will you call if you can’t make it?” This resulted in a 3.5 percent improvement in attendance. Having patients write down the date and time of their appointment on a card resulted in an 18 percent improvement in attendance. And adding a sign in the clinic, “87% of Patients Arrived for Their Appointments Last Month” resulted in a 31.7 percent improvement in attendance. 

• On the flip side, messages can unintentionally increase negative behavior. In 2007, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) informed taxpayers that there would be additional penalties for anyone knowingly submitting a false return. The following year, there was a 22 percent increase in tax fraud. Why? Martin believes it’s because the IRS was broadcasting the message, “Look at all the people who are already doing this undesirable thing!”

What drove the improvements in behavior, says Martin, is the fact that people’s behavior is largely shaped by the behavior of those around them, especially if it’s a group with which they identify. Interestingly, the impact of these messages is almost completely unconscious; if people are asked why they paid their taxes or showed up for their doctors’ appointments, they would not attribute it to the messages they received. This means that conducting surveys or focus groups is not the way to track effectiveness. The best way is to look at the results and continue to tweak messages for the best outcomes.

“98% of HBR Readers Love This Article” by Steve Martin in Harvard Business Review, October 2012 (Vol. 90, #10, p. 23-25), no e-link available