Noah Goldstein researched how to persuade hotel guests to reuse their towels. In these days of environmental awareness, would a card asking the room’s occupants to reuse their towels to save the environment encourage people to reuse their towels? He found these cards did indeed have a positive effect. Noah and his colleague Robert Cialdini wondered if publicising norms might increase reuse. Changing the wording to say that the majority of their fellow guests were reusing their towels proved 26% more effective than those who only saw the environmental message to reuse their towel. This taps into social norms appeal. They then changed the wording to indicate reuse behaviour for guests of the same room, and this time the increase was 33%.   

Example: Stephen looked at the number of students engaging in non-compulsory discussion boards. He sent out an email to say that 75% of students in that module had already engaged in the board, thanking them for their contributions. Whether due to social norm behaviour or because non-participating students felt they might be missing out, his engagement rate went up to 85% within one week.