How does experienced behavior change normative expectations regarding socially beneficial actions?

Social norms, understood as shared expectations of appropriate behavior, can help resolve collective action problems by making salient collectively beneficial equilibria. However, achieving long-lasting behavior of this type has so far challenged policymakers. To make progress, we need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of people’s normative expectations regarding collectively beneficial behaviors. This study employs a controlled laboratory experiment to collect panel data on individuals’ normative expectations regarding contributions in a public goods (PG) game. Using the Krupka & Weber’s 2013 method, we elicit participants’ normative expectations at three stages: before playing a repeated standard PG game, after completing the repeated PG game, and after playing a repeated PG game with social incentives activated through the threat of exclusion from non-financial group activities. By comparing these stages, we examine whether and how experienced group behavior in PG games within two distinct structured social contexts—one without and one with social incentives—shapes individuals’ normative expectations. Our findings indicate heterogeneity in how social norms are perceived and how normative expectations change in response to experienced group behaviors in the PG games. Normative expectations for socially beneficial actions tend to emerge when such group behavior conveys a normative signal (i.e., when non-financial social incentives lead to increased and sustained contributions), particularly when the social norm is initially perceived as being loose. This work contributes to the growing body of research on social norms by offering experimental evidence that advances our understanding of the factors that determine beneficial normative change.