Understanding Norm Clusters and Their Dynamics in the Transition to Renewable Energy

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This project seeks to understand how people's worldviews and actions are impacted by the beliefs and actions of others. It examines this question in an important context for our nation's security, health, and natural environment: support for renewable energy and offshore wind. It measures people’s perceptions of a broad range of beliefs and actions they hold of others and examines how these beliefs cluster together and create a social reality about what is normal that shapes one's own opinion about energy policy and technology. The studies also examine what happens to this cluster of beliefs as external events modify one of the beliefs. Not only is the domain selected, offshore wind support, better understood by this work, but the ways that people are impacted by others' actions and beliefs are clarified broadly. Given that interventions for many social problems in health, education, environmentalism, security and other domains seek to harness how we are influenced by others in order to create positive social change, this deeper understanding of how social influence can inform and improve these interventions can help benefit addressing many contemporary social problems.This project seeks to understand social norms as a clustered network of connected social perceptions. Theoretical and applied research on social norm perceptions or interventions often only study or utilize one norm at a time. Social norms, however do not exist in isolation. Instead, norms co-exist in a network of other descriptive or normative beliefs, forming clusters. This research clarifies how perceptions of social norms are connected and the causal relationship of those connections, pursuing the following questions: How are networks of social norm perceptions organized? Do norm clusters have a hierarchical structure, and do higher-order beliefs dictate more specific lower-order beliefs? What happens when one of these norms gets modified, either by an experimental manipulation or by some naturally occurring change(s) in the environment? Does such a change in the perception of a norm only influence beliefs or behaviors directly connected to it or does its effect spread throughout the norm's cluster as activation does in a semantic network? The team explores how these diagnosed characteristics of norm clusters can be used to shift individual behavior or belief. In a series of studies over 2 years, the scholars examine perceptions of norms surrounding the topic of offshore wind energy and relevant policy support. Using online survey experiments and a combination of convenience samples, representative samples and longitudinal data, the team assesses the structure of norm clusters, which normative and descriptive beliefs are more related to others, and investigates how manipulating one norm in a cluster can affect the perception of norms it is connected to. These insights are used to compare multiple norm intervention techniques to see which is most successful at increasing understanding. Rather than simply intervening on a single norm, understanding the norm cluster for offshore wind allows the team to better understand the most fruitful place to intervene and reveals multiple points for leverage on this issue, so the team may identify a cleaner, more sustainable, and economically viable energy system. Beyond offshore wind, social norm interventions are used across a variety of domains. This research provides a methodology and theoretical framework for applied researchers that would enable them to understand how and where to best intervene in a norms cluster to enhance understanding.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.