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

该项目旨在了解人们的世界观和行为如何受到他人的信仰和行为的影响。它在一个关乎国家安全、健康和自然环境的重要背景下审视了这个问题：对可再生能源和海上风能的支持。它衡量人们对他人的广泛信仰和行为的看法，并研究这些信仰如何聚集在一起，创造出一个关于什么是正常的社会现实，从而形成一个人对能源政策和技术的看法。这些研究还考察了当外部事件改变其中一个信念时，这组信念会发生什么变化。通过这项工作，不仅可以更好地理解所选择的领域，海上风电支持，而且可以广泛地澄清人们受他人行为和信念影响的方式。鉴于针对卫生、教育、环境保护、安全和其他领域的许多社会问题的干预措施试图利用我们如何受他人影响，以创造积极的社会变革，对社会影响如何为这些干预措施提供信息和改进的深入了解，有助于解决许多当代社会问题。这个项目试图将社会规范理解为一个连接社会观念的集群网络。社会规范感知或干预的理论和应用研究往往一次只研究或利用一种规范。然而，社会规范并不是孤立存在的。相反，规范共存于其他描述性或规范性信念的网络中，形成集群。本研究阐明了对社会规范的感知是如何联系起来的，以及这些联系之间的因果关系，并探讨了以下问题：社会规范感知网络是如何组织起来的？规范集群是否有等级结构，高阶信念是否决定了更具体的低阶信念？当这些规范中的一个被改变时，不管是通过实验操作还是环境中一些自然发生的变化，会发生什么？这种对规范的感知变化是否只影响与之直接相关的信念或行为，或者它的影响是否像激活在语义网络中那样在规范的集群中传播？研究小组探讨了如何利用规范集群的这些诊断特征来改变个人的行为或信念。在两年多的一系列研究中，学者们考察了围绕海上风能主题的规范和相关政策支持的看法。通过在线调查实验和便利样本、代表性样本和纵向数据的结合，该团队评估了规范集群的结构，哪些规范和描述性信念与其他信念更相关，并研究了如何操纵集群中的一个规范可以影响与之相关的规范的感知。这些见解被用来比较多种规范干预技术，看看哪种技术最能成功地增进理解。了解海上风电的规范集群，而不是简单地干预单一规范，可以让团队更好地了解最有效的干预地点，并揭示在这个问题上的多个杠杆点，这样团队就可以确定一个更清洁、更可持续、经济上可行的能源系统。除了海上风电，社会规范干预也被用于各种领域。本研究为应用研究人员提供了一种方法和理论框架，使他们能够了解如何以及在何处最好地干预规范集群以增强理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.