Salient deliberative norm types in comment sections on news sites

Civil and argumentative public discussions are considered crucial for functioning democracies. Among other factors, the quality of user discussions of political issues on news sites depends on prevalent discussion norms. We integrate injunctive and descriptive norms into news comment research, assuming that the degree of salience of the respective norm influences the commenting behavior. Furthermore, we discuss how technical affordances such as default comment sorting determine the comment visibility and thus the salience of norms. Using data from a content analysis of 8162 comments on eight German news sites, we investigate how the two norm types influence deliberative forms of commenting. The results show that different types of salient injunctive and descriptive norms promote norm-compliant commenting. Furthermore, the default comment sorting can determine which comments are more or less salient. The results underline the importance of distinguishing different norm types in analyzing the quality of user comments in comment sections.

United States Normative Attitudes for Pursuing Parenthood as a Function of Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Age

Decisions about whether or not to become a parent are significant parts of normative human development. Many studies have shown that married different-sex couples are expected to become parents, and that many social pressures enforce this norm. For same-sex couples, however, much less is known about social norms surrounding parenthood within marriage. This study examined injunctive norms and descriptive norms for the pursuit of parenthood as a function of age, gender, and sexual orientation. Participants in an internet survey included 1020 (522 heterosexual, 498 lesbian/gay) cisgender people from across the United States Findings showed that norms, especially descriptive norms, for the pursuit of parenthood for heterosexual people were much stronger than those for lesbian women and gay men, and that norms for lesbian women were stronger than those for gay men. These differences were more pronounced for older, heterosexual, and male participants. However, lesbian and gay participants, especially gay men, reported that lesbian and gay people ought to become parents to the same extent as heterosexual people. Overall, the results indicated that, regardless of sexual orientation, adults report that lesbian and gay married people ought to become parents, but that they expect only a minority of these couples will pursue parenthood. This research provided a glimpse into how Americans are envisioning family formation among same-sex couples today.

Addressing customer misbehavior contagion in access-based services

Purpose Access-based services (ABSs) provide short-term access to goods, physical facilities, space or labor in exchange for access fees without transferring legal ownership (e.g. bike-sharing). This study aims to investigate what service providers can do to minimize financial losses when customers misbehave with the service providers’ assets in ABSs. The study also examines the effects of product misuse on subsequent customers and what factors may mitigate it. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a scenario-based experiment to test the conceptual model. Findings Injunctive norms reduce the mediating effect of descriptive norms on misbehavior contagion. As generally accepted and approved (injunctive) norms become salient, they override the impact of prevailing (descriptive) norms, thereby breaking the vicious cycle of misbehavior contagion. Customer-company identification (CCI) and reduced interpersonal anonymity mitigate the effects of previous misbehavior on misbehavior contagion. Practical implications ABS firms should strive to mitigate the financial and reputational losses they suffer from customer misbehavior. Such mitigation would be a win-win for the ABS firm (reduced misbehavior) and the customers (improved user experience). Originality/value The research complements prior research highlighting the role of social norms in misbehavior contagion. The study demonstrates the role of boundary conditions by investigating the interactive effects of descriptive and injunctive norms. In addition, it shows the positive impact of CCI and reduced interpersonal anonymity on containing misbehavior contagion.

Observasi Perilaku Tidak Patuh di Lintas Sebidang oleh Pengendara Motor dan Angkutan Kota saat Peak Hour dan Non-Peak Hour

Perlintasan sebidang merupakan perlintasan datar yang menyilang pada satu bidang yang sama antara perlintasan kereta api dengan kendaraan darat. Pada lintas sebidang seringkali terjadi pelanggaran yang mana pelanggaran tersebut kerap kali membahayakan hingga menyebabkan terjadinya kecelakaan. Tidak sedikit kasus kecelakaan terjadi karena pengendara memaksa diri agar tetap bisa melewati perlintasan kereta api karena terburu-buru untuk sampai tujuan. Pelanggaran pada lintas sebidang dapat berupa melewati palang kereta saat aba-aba berbunyi, berhenti di depan palang, dan berhenti di ruas jalan arah berlawanan. Maka dari itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui perbedaan perilaku melanggar peraturan lintas sebidang pada saat peak-hour dan non-peak hour. Data yang diambil menggunakan metode observasi, dan dianalisis dengan metode inter-rater reliability. Pelanggaran yang dilakukan pengendara tidak menunjukkan adanya perbedaan saat peak-hour dan non-peak hour. Perilaku melanggar peraturan lintas sebidang dipengaruhi oleh descriptive norms yang menyebabkan adanya kebiasaan melanggar akibat dari pembelajaran terhadap pelanggar yang lainnya. Kata kunci: Pelanggaran, Lintas sebidang, Observasi, Norma deskriptif

Development and Initial Validation of the PILCAST Questionnaire: Understanding Parents’ Intentions to Let Their Child Cycle or Walk to School

Children generally do not meet the recommendation of 60 min of daily physical activity (PA); therefore, active school transportation (AST) is an opportunity to increase PA. To promote AST, the involvement of parents seems essential. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the aim was to develop and validate the PILCAST questionnaire to understand parents’ intentions to let their child cycle or walk to school. Cross-sectional sampling was performed, where 1024 responses were collected from parents. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated acceptable fit indices for the factorial structure according to the TPB, comprising 32 items grouped in 11 latent constructs. All constructs showed satisfying reliability. The regression analysis showed that the TPB explained 55.3% of parents’ intentions to let the child cycle to school and 20.6% regarding walking, increasing by a further 18.3% and 16.6%, respectively, when past behavior was added. The most influential factors regarding cycling were facilitating perceived behavioral control, positive attitudes, subjective and descriptive norms, and for walking, subjective and descriptive norms. The PILCAST questionnaire contributes to a better understanding of the psychological antecedents involving parents’ decisions to let their child cycle or walk to school, and may therefore provide guidance when designing, implementing and evaluating interventions aiming to promote AST.

The Relationship Between Normativity and Communication in the Being of a Person

Relevance of the work is in the fact that communication is associated with difficulties and sometimes with impossibility of transmitting information. For this reason, the analysis of the communication process from the point of view of social normativity makes it possible to achieve an effective exchange of information between individuals as subjects of social relations. The identification of ascriptive and descriptive norms of the communication process makes it possible to identify the necessary grounds for the transmission of information between social actors. However, it is important to study the problem of identification with the position of normativity, not from a position of having a person of properties that determine itself, allowing you to identify the ways and forms of communication between people, who are understood by the author as subjects identifying themselves with a set of social norms. The scientific novelty of the work is the study of the relationship between the concepts of “communication’’ and ‘‘social normativity’’. It is argued that the normativity of communication is a unity of ascriptive and descriptive norms. The former determine the possibility of realizing a person’s ability to communicate, the latter are thought of as the result of a social agreement, the purpose of which is to achieve effective interaction between social actors. Communication of normativity is interpreted by the author as the ability of individuals to exchange information and use the normative bases of existence for this purpose. Problem statement: the authors are interested in finding a correlation between the concepts of “communication’’ and “normativity’’ in the social life of persons. The purpose of the study is to determine the unity of communication and normativity in the social and personal life of the individual, to identify the mutual influence of these social phenomena. The article deals with the main concepts: normativity, ascriptive and descriptive norms, communication. The author uses a logical method that allows us to make a meaningful relationship between the concepts of ‘‘communication’’, ‘‘social normativity’’, ‘‘ascriptive norms’’, ‘‘descriptive norms’’, ‘‘normativity of communication’’ and ‘‘communication of normativity’’, as well as a critical method that allows us to rethink the relationship of these concepts.The obtained results showed that the normativity of communication expresses a set of norms of information translation, which includes a set of natural and social norms as conditions for the possibility of a person’s communicative activity. The normativity of communication allows us to determine the possibility of a person’s implementation of the communicative process, as well as socially acceptable forms of such interaction that have consensual grounds. Normativity communication allows us to describe the ability of social subjects to exchange information.

Sharing on Facebook and Face-to-Face What Others Do or Approve: Word-of-Mouth Driven by Social Norms

Information sharing on social media [i.e., electronic word-of-mouth, (eWOM) and face-to-face word-of-mouth (fWOM)] plays an important role in message dissemination. This study investigates the effectiveness of group norms in motivating eWOM and fWOM. Drawing upon the psychological distance and construal level literature, this study tests the impact of group norms, the interaction effect of norms type (descriptive vs. injunctive norms), and the group distance on eWOMand fWOM. Based on one field study and three laboratory experiments, this study finds that normative cues in messages are impactful in driving WOM and the impact becomes especially stronger when the psychological distance of the social group is congruent with that of norms type tied to the group. Specifically, an interaction effect emerges, such as distant (close) group injunctive (descriptive) norms, are more impactful in driving WOM than close (distant) group injunctive (descriptive) norms. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that a close group has greater impacts than distant groups in terms of social influence, this study shows that messages with distant groups are more (or at least equally) likely to be shared than with a close group when tied with injunctive norms. The findings suggest that group norms are perceived to be more relevant when there is a match between the psychological distance of the social group and the norms type tied to the group.

Organisational Climate and Pro-environmental Behaviours at Work: The Mediating Role of Personal Norms

Organisations are currently strongly encouraged to adopt more responsible production patterns aligned with sustainable development goals (SDGs). Pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in the workplace can strengthen the expected positive impacts of organisations’ environmental performance and engender more sustainable transitions to low-carbon production. Research on PEBs at work is relatively recent, so this field still lacks studies of the role of organisational policies and practices in workers’ adoption of these behaviours and of psychosocial processes that contribute to more sustainable workplaces. The present research examined how perceptions of organisations’ environmental policies and practices (i.e., organisational climate or injunctive norms) and of coworkers’ PEBs (i.e., descriptive norms) affect employees’ self-reported voluntary PEBs. Thogersen’s norm taxonomy model was also applied to address the role of personal norms. Self-commitment to sustainable goals at work can play a fundamental role in workers’ behavioural choices, so this research further investigated whether personal norms mediate the relationship between perceived pro-environmental organisational climate and reported workplace PEBs. To test the proposed model, data were collected on 210 workers from different business sectors, who completed an online questionnaire. The analyses showed that, after controlling for the effects of tenure, education level, and a management position, a pro-environmental organisational climate predicts stronger personal norms and a greater tendency to adopt PEBs at work (adjusted R squared=0.36), providing evidence of complete mediation. Coworkers’ perceived descriptive norms also contribute directly to self-reported PEBs. The discussion of the results focuses on the importance of organisational level initiatives as a way to promote change in individuals’ behaviours, which can have positive consequences for workplaces’ transition to sustainability.