Energy production is dominated by fossil fuels causing substantial CO
2 emissions. Twenty percent of these emissions are due to residential energy consumption (OECD/IEA
2016), making peoples household energy behavior a noteworthy aspect of environmental impact. Still, past research suggests that every day individual behavioral change, with little or no decrease in well-being, can lessen these emissions by 20% (Dietz et al.
2009). How should interventions to motivate such energy conservation behaviors be designed? A number of intervention techniques have shown to effectively reduce energy usage (see Abrahamse et al.
2005 for review). For example, by providing feedback (Karlin et al.
2015) or by using social influence approaches (Abrahamse and Steg
2013), one particularly successful social influence technique is normative feedback (e.g., Allcott
2011; Schultz et al.
2007). Normative feedback draws on the persuasive impact of the social norms, that is, the perceived behavioral pattern and/or (dis)approval by others (Cialdini et al.
1990). More formally, social norms have been defined as “rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide and/or constrain social behavior without the force of law” (Cialdini and Trost
1998, pp. 152) and have metaphorically been described as navigation tool steering behavior in a socially appropriate direction (Morris et al.
2015). Past research has shown that social norms can be used to promote a number of pro-environmental behaviors such as littering prevention (Cialdini et al.
1991; De Kort et al.
2008), sustainable transportation (Kormos et al.
2015), recycling (Schultz
1999), and water conservation (Richetin et al.
2016; Schultz et al.
2016; Jaeger and Schultz
2017). Past studies have also showed that social norms can be applied to promote energy conservation in both public (Bator et al.
2014; Bergquist and Nilsson
2016; Dwyer et al.
2015; Oceja and Berenguer
2009) and residential settings (Allcott
2011; Nolan et al.
2008; Schultz et al.
2007; Schultz et al.
2015). However, the effect of normative influence is often moderated by other psychological variables. For example, stating a commitment to save water before receiving normative information about water conservation promotes long-term water saving (Jaeger and Schultz
2017). Similarly, recent meta-analytic reviews suggest that the effect of social influence on sustainable behavior is conditional (Abrahamse and Steg
2013; Fischer
2008). One important condition for social norms to affect behavior is that descriptive social norms (signaling what others do) and injunctive social norms (signaling other peoples (dis)approval) are aligned (Cialdini
2003). That is, socially approved norms affect behavior more effectively if people also observe that other act in accordance with those norms. For example, Cialdini (
2003) argued that providing an injunctive anti-litter norm while at the same showing that people litter undermines peoples motivation to avoid littering. Applied to energy usage, norm alignment has shown to be crucial for normative feedback to result in energy conservation (e.g., Schultz et al.
2007). Another factor that may affect conformity to social norms is social comparisons (Festinger
1954). Situations that make people compare themselves to others may also be situations that make people more inclined to adjust their behaviors to others. The present paper applies normative influence to smart meters in order to examine different forms of normative feedback to promote energy conservation. The aims of this paper is first to conceptually replicate the effect of norm alignment (Cialdini
2003; Schultz et al.
2007), suggesting that the impact of social norms will be stronger if people are provided with information that other people
both conduct and approve of energy conservation. Second, building on social comparison theory, we aimed to explore if normative feedback is affected by feedback unit (i.e., monetary versus kWh). Finally, also drawing on social comparison theory, we introduce norm distance, a new theoretical proposition suggesting that the impact of social norm depends on “how far” other people’s behavior is from our own behavior. More specifically, as social comparisons should increase with increased closeness, we suggest that people are more likely to adjust their behaviors to others if other people save just
a little bit more energy than they do than if other people save
much more energy.