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If a society does not identify with purchase of illegal goods, consumers will undertake more psychological burden when buying the goods. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of social norm of anti‐piracy on social welfare.

This paper uses a theoretical model to consider that although consumers will select piracy goods for the concerns of net utility, due to pressure from social norms, consumers are not wiling to purchase piracy goods.

The results show that enhancement of social norm of anti‐piracy will improve overall social welfare; however, the social norm of anti‐piracy must be limited to certain scope. Extreme social norm of anti‐piracy, in comparison to the situation without social norm of anti‐piracy, will lower overall social welfare.

If complete laws and strict enforcement cannot curb piracy, we can boldly assume that mature and high degree of “rule of low” is the force to restrain purchase of piracy goods. The paper examines the relations between social norm of anti‐piracy and social welfare.

This article explores the heterogenous social mechanisms that drive responsible environmental behaviours by investigating differences in the mean effect of the psychosocial determinants of the intention to buy organic foods.

Using data for a representative sample of the Spanish population, we estimated the mean effect of the constructs represented in the responsible environmental behaviour (REB) theory that affect sustainable food consumption, and examined the social mechanisms that may explain heterogeneity in the mean effect of those constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis, linear regression, and latent class regression were used in the analysis.

We found that the effect of REB’s psychosocial constructs varied significantly, demonstrating social heterogeneity in the estimated average effect. We identified different social mechanisms that explain variations in organic food purchase intentions: environmental attitudes and social norms shape these intentions among socioeconomically privileged consumers, whereas personal norms shape these intentions among less socially advantaged consumers.

Our research contributes to the literature by highlighting the existence of differing social mechanisms explaining organic food purchase intentions. The uncovering of three social mechanisms explaining differences in the mean effect of factors driving those intentions provides valuable insights with regard to both further developing a holistic framework for responsible environmental behaviours and developing new public policies and marketing strategies aimed at improving sustainable food consumption.

Facilitating members' continual participation in a community is crucial for ensuring the community's long-term survival. However, knowledge regarding whether member similarity is related to member participation and the mechanism underlying this relationship is limited. Drawing on similarity–attraction, social exchange and social identity theories, this study explored the influences of different facets of similarity (i.e. value, personality and goal similarity) on group norm conformity, group identity and social participation.

Data were collected from 444 Taiwanese members of social networking sites (SNSs), and structural equation modeling was employed to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results revealed that value similarity directly affected group norm conformity but did not directly affect group identity; personality similarity influenced group identity but not group norm conformity. Goal similarity had positive influences on group norm conformity and group identity. Moreover, group norm conformity had direct and positive influences on group identity and social participation; group identity also had a positive influence on social participation.

On the basis of the aforementioned findings, this study contributes to the understanding of factors facilitating SNS members' participation from the perspective of similarity. These findings can serve as a reference for SNS administrators to facilitate social participation by emphasizing member similarity.

The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the current social norms of pricing that constrain sellers' discriminatory pricing on the internet. Violations of such social norms can lead to perceptions of price unfairness and swift and potentially damaging negative reactions from consumers. This paper seeks to demonstrate a state‐of‐the‐art technique for assessing social norms, to identify current norms using a large representative sample of US consumers and to distinguish between social norms and personal beliefs.

The study involves an online survey of 387 respondents. The survey was designed to measure both the consensus and the strength of consumer reaction to seller behaviors. To establish that a behavior is the norm, the consensus has to be greater than a 65 percent agreement and the strength of the response has to be significantly different from neutral. Both personal beliefs and perceptions of society's beliefs were collected.

The paper finds that some of the social norms constraining discriminatory pricing on the internet are as follows: a seller should charge the same price for a given item to all customers; a seller should not charge a higher price to either more loyal or more frequent customers; a seller should not charge more to new or infrequent customers; and a seller should not charge less to infrequent purchasers. In addition, although it is not established as a norm, a surprising 50 percent of the respondents think that Americans in general believe that all retailers should charge the same price for the same item. The paper also finds that personal beliefs are consistent with social norms but more extreme.

The implications are that e‐tailers need to be careful about price discrimination on the internet – many of the most profitable practices violate current internet pricing norms. For example, consumers do not think that it is fair to give a cheaper price to a new buyer than to a repeat buyer. However, different e‐tailers can offer the same product at a different price. That is not considered price discrimination.

By identifying the social norms of pricing, sellers are provided with the information they need to avoid unwitting violations of those norms. Sellers can thus avoid angering their customers, as Amazon did when they allegedly charged new customers less than established customers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of the underlying social motivation, including collective norm and subjective norm, which shapes users’ decisions to revisit a social commerce site.

Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the research model using data from a survey of 531 social commerce users.

Results support the importance of subjective and collective norms as measures of social norm. Both norms were combined to: develop a parsimonious higher order measure of social motivation, and examine the consequent impact on social commerce continuance behavior. In addition, the authors demonstrate that the factors that influence the social impact theory variables, specifically time spent during each visit, affective experience and gender can moderate the impact of social norm on social commerce continuance use intention.

Social commerce website designers can provide visibility of the number of a user’s close contacts (or contacts that the user either interacts with or follows) as well as the total number of people using the same technology as a visual cue to encourage user retention on the site.

The results indicate that customers’ social commerce revisit intentions are strongly influenced by a combination of how they perceive the behavior as endorsed both by their friends and by the majority view in their social network.

This study examines and validates sources of social influence that affect continuance use intention with social technologies such as social commerce sites.

The purpose of this paper is to present details of a large-scale experiment that evaluated the impact of communicating two types of feedback to householders regarding their domestic electricity consumption: feedback on their own consumption and feedback of both their own consumption and that of others in their locality.

Digital technologies were used to automatically measure and communicate the electricity consumption of 316 UK residents for a period of 16 weeks. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: one involving no feedback; one involving feedback about a household's own usage, and one involving a household's own usage plus social norms feedback (the average consumption of others in the locality). At the end of the study, a selection of participants took part in interviews or focus groups.

Both types of feedback (individual and individual-plus-social-norms) led to reductions in consumption of about 3 per cent. Those receiving social norms feedback were significantly more likely to engage with the information provided. However, the social norms information had no additional impact on consumption. Survey and interview data confirmed that participants from both conditions had been encouraged to adopt new energy-saving practices. The study concludes that near real-time individual feedback can be sufficient for usage reduction if it is provided in a historical format. It also suggests that the impact of social norms information may previously have been confounded with that of individual feedback.

This is the first time that a controlled experiment in the field of domestic electricity consumption has compared the impact of real-time social norm information with that of information that only contains individual household usage.

This study aims to examine the potential guest perception of green hotel attributes (GHAs) and the underlying mechanism through which GHA perception influences attitude toward green hotels, intention to stay at green hotels and willingness to pay a premium. It also investigates the moderating roles of personal norms and social norms in the influence of GHA perception on identification and trust toward green hotels.

A two-stage survey was used to collect data via Prolific Academic. The authors tested the hypotheses on 521 valid responses using the partial least squares method.

The results show that identification and trust mediate the effect of GHA perception on attitude, intention to stay and willingness to pay a premium for green hotels. The authors found a positive interaction effect between GHA perception and personal norms on identification and trust and a negative interaction effect between social norms and GHA perception on trust. The interaction effect of GHA perception and social norms on identification is not significant.

This study presents an integrated framework for green hotel adoption by examining the potential guest perception of GHAs and explores how it fosters positive guest responses. Findings show that GHA perception positively influences potential guest responses through identification (the personal route) and trust (the social route). This study also simultaneously considers personal norms and social norms, together with the effects of their interactions with GHA perception on identification and trust.

This study aims to examine the impact of social norms on climate change mitigation readiness, the mediating role of environmental purchasing intentions and attitudes on the relationship between social norms and climate change mitigation readiness.

Data were collected from transport facility operators and managers of shipping firms and bus transport firms. The SPSS software and covariance-based software (CB-SEM) were used to obtain results on the impact of social norms on climate change mitigation readiness, the mediating role of environmental purchasing intentions on the relationship between social norms and climate change mitigation readiness, and the mediating role of attitudes on the relationship between social norms and climate change mitigation readiness.

The findings indicated that social norms influenced climate change mitigation readiness, while both attitudes and environmental purchasing intentions partially mediated the relationship between social norms and climate change mitigation readiness.

The study mainly focused on transport facility operators and managers of shipping firms and bus firms eliminating other participants in the transport sector. Further, the research focused on majorly three psychological factors that included social norms, intentions and attitudes leaving out other psychological factors.

Climate change mitigation is a major issue of concern to policy makers and researchers. Much of the focus is placed on mitigation strategies with the passengers and private vehicle owners as the major target. Other research focuses on reducing the impact of climate change outcomes through introduction of cleaner technologies. However, issues concerning the role of psychological factors in enhancing climate change mitigation readiness have not been given significant attention.

The paper emphasises the general relevance of social norms and social associations for cooperative behaviour in less or non‐social economic contexts, focusing in particular on economic laboratory experiments, and to illustrate the underlying psychological driving forces.

The argument focuses on the interplay between social norms, their psychological enforcement mechanism (cognitive dissonance) and context effects. Drawing on findings from both (social) psychology and experimental economics, it emphasises the relevance of social norms for cooperative behaviour also in less or non‐social environments as often created in economic laboratory experiments. Moreover, the conditions for cognitive dissonance effects to occur are summarised and the corresponding behavioural effects are both highlighted and exemplified by means of various examples including the analysis of a specific data set.

The discussion strongly suggests that the influence of common cooperative social norms is difficult to “anonymise away” in laboratory experiments or other less socially focused decision environments. Moreover, it provides a possible explanation for the occurrence of a variety of behavioural patterns often found in such settings, such as initially high but decreasing willingness to cooperate in social dilemmas.

Emphasising the far reach of social aspects in economic decision making, the discussion may help in the design of institutions as it illustrates a widespread source of non‐economic individual incentives.

The argument addresses the idiosyncrasies of individual cooperative behaviour in situations where economic incentives should hinder such behaviour. Adding to earlier arguments which explain such cooperation, for example, by reference to fairness concerns or inequity aversion, the present discussion emphasises in particular the specific psychological driving forces behind such behaviour. In doing so, it establishes a clear link to the research on cognitive dissonance in psychology.

This research systematically reviewed studies on tax compliance based on five determinants consisting of tax services, trust in government, personal norm, social norm and religiosity.

The research used a vote-counting method to synthesize 279 studies consisting of 160 empirical studies and 119 non-empirical studies conducted from 1946 until 2017.

The research has made a relatively robust conclusion related to the impacts of determinant factors on tax compliance. Tax service and trust in government are the most critical factors to increase tax compliance. Personal norm, social norm and religiosity encourage tax compliance, yet the influence is not as strong as expected.

This research suggests that improving tax service and government trust are more effective and relatively easier to implement than developing the taxpayers' positive behaviors.

Several studies conducted to synthesize the impacts of determinant factors on tax compliance were only limited to the empirical research which provided sufficient statistical data. On the other hand, there were many substantial research types discussing tax compliance without involving statistical numbers. The facts have distorted the complete picture of tax compliance. Recently, no synthesis studies have comprehensively combined and compared the empirical with non-empirical research based on the related theories. Thus, the synthesis studies that discuss tax compliance based on non-deterrence approach are still limited.