Law and Norms: Empirical Evidence

A large theoretical literature argues laws exert a causal effect on norms, but empirical evidence remains scant. Using a novel identification strategy, this paper provides a clean empirical test of this proposition. We use incentivized vignette experiments to directly measure social norms relating to actions subject to legal thresholds. Our large-scale experiments featured around 5,800 subjects drawn from six samples recruited in the UK and China. Results show laws often, but not always, influence norms. Our findings are robust to different methods of measuring norms, and remain qualitatively similar across samples and between two countries with very different legislative environments.