Social Tipping Points and Norm Change in Large-scale Laboratory Experiments

大规模实验室实验中的社会临界点和规范变化

• 批准号: 2242443
• 负责人: James Andreoni
• 金额: $ 51.3万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-01 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2242443&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Social; Tipping; Points; Norm; Change

This research project will use large-scale laboratory experiments to investigate norm change and provide an empirically validated framework to analyze social tipping points. The authors will study situations where norms, or a lack thereof, damage a society’s welfare: discriminatory norms, norms that curtail female labor force participation, norms that support unhealthy behaviors (e.g., smoking or drinking), or the absence of environmental norms. Understanding how norm change can occur spontaneously and how policy can help such processes is essential for addressing global challenges such as economic inequality, global warming, or public health issues. The social tipping framework developed and tested in this research project will provide an inexpensive way to evaluate policy interventions that aim to alter social norms, such as taxing harmful practices, dispensing information, and incentivizing agents of change who hold prominent social positions and can spread positive change. Another aim of the research project will be to improve how social scientists and large survey companies conduct surveys on socioeconomic issues. Traditional surveys ask for a person's opinion on a topic, but responses may not be truthful. Traditional surveys also ask static questions that are uninformative about whether or not norm change can occur. This project will develop a new method to design surveys with dynamic and incentivized questions, allowing researchers to understand the potential for norm change across different social issues. The project’s results will be socially and economically beneficial because they can contribute to a better allocation of resources.The authors will empirically validate a theoretical and experimental framework to advance our understanding of social tipping points and norm change. The framework combines a theory of tipping points, large-scale lab experiments, and incentivized representative surveys. The main objective will be to organize societal and economic factors affecting norm change in a unified framework. This framework will enable researchers to study social tipping points and norm change depending on a society’s structure, e.g., people’s tolerance toward norm deviations, diversity, social networks, social fragmentation, information and filter bubbles, political institutions, individual beliefs, risk and fairness preferences, and behavioral biases such as the sunk cost fallacy. The framework will serve as a tool to evaluate policy interventions, helping to answer questions like, “Which interventions can raise people’s willingness to get vaccinated?” and “Are more diverse societies more likely to experience positive norm change?” The authors will further leverage the social tipping framework to design a new type of representative survey to determine whether or not a particular society, e.g., Californians, Texans, racial groups, or religious groups, is ripe for change for different social issues such as affirmative action, immigration, or climate change. A crucial methodological contribution of these surveys will be to allow researchers to detect the potential for norm change rather than focusing on static societal beliefs and expectations.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.

该研究项目将使用大规模的实验室实验来调查规范变化，并提供一个经验验证的框架来分析社会临界点。作者将研究规范或缺乏规范损害社会福利的情况：歧视性规范，限制女性劳动力参与的规范，支持不健康行为的规范（例如，吸烟或饮酒），或缺乏环境规范。了解规范变化如何自发发生以及政策如何帮助这些过程对于应对经济不平等、全球变暖或公共卫生问题等全球挑战至关重要。本研究项目中开发和测试的社会小费框架将提供一种廉价的方式来评估旨在改变社会规范的政策干预措施，例如对有害做法征税，分发信息，并激励那些拥有突出社会地位并能够传播积极变化的变革代理人。该研究项目的另一个目的是改进社会科学家和大型调查公司如何进行社会经济问题的调查。传统的调查会询问一个人对某个话题的看法，但回答可能不真实。传统的调查也会问一些静态的问题，这些问题对规范是否会发生变化没有提供信息。该项目将开发一种新的方法来设计具有动态和激励性问题的调查，使研究人员能够了解不同社会问题的规范变化潜力。该项目的结果将是社会和经济上有益的，因为它们可以有助于更好地分配资源。作者将实证验证理论和实验框架，以促进我们对社会临界点和规范变化的理解。该框架结合了临界点理论，大规模实验室实验和激励代表性调查。主要目标是将影响规范变化的社会和经济因素纳入一个统一框架。这一框架将使研究人员能够根据社会结构研究社会临界点和规范变化，例如，人们对规范偏差、多样性、社交网络、社会分裂、信息和过滤泡沫、政治制度、个人信仰、风险和公平偏好以及沉没成本谬误等行为偏见的容忍度。该框架将作为评估政策干预措施的工具，帮助回答诸如“哪些干预措施可以提高人们接种疫苗的意愿？”以及“更加多样化的社会是否更有可能经历积极的规范变革？”作者将进一步利用社会小费框架来设计一种新型的代表性调查，以确定一个特定的社会，例如，加州人、德克萨斯人、种族团体或宗教团体已经成熟，可以针对平权行动、移民或气候变化等不同的社会问题进行变革。这些调查在方法上的一个重要贡献是使研究人员能够发现规范变化的潜力，而不是专注于静态的社会信仰和期望。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。