Job market paper

Beyond Conformity: Framing Social Information When Preferred Choices Are Uncommon

With Stefano Ceolotto, Deirdre Robertson, and Niall Farrell.

Abstract
Descriptive social information is understood to influence behaviour by showing what others do. We provide evidence that the effects are not uniformly conformist: they depend on the underlying distribution and whether typicality or improvement is salient. In a preregistered experiment, 1,828 consumers chose appliances in a retailer-style shopping task and a discrete-choice experiment. We compared no social information with two frames derived from the same reference distribution. ‘Direct Comparison’ reported shares choosing each energy-efficiency label, whereas ‘Positive Deviance’ reported shares choosing less efficient alternatives. Direct Comparison increased selection of energy-efficient choices when efficient options were common, producing mixed responses when they were uncommon, including a greater propensity to choose the least efficient option. Positive Deviance increased selection for efficient options whether efficiency was common or uncommon, without increasing selection of the least efficient option. We argue this is because descriptive social information shapes the comparison standard used to evaluate choices.

Shopping experiment results

For fridge-freezers, Positive Deviance raised the share of A-rated choices by 9.7 percentage points relative to control. Direct Comparison increased both A- and E-rated choices.

The left panels show the share choosing each rating. The right panels show percentage-point differences from the control group.