BAND and How Social norms can make or break market-based interventions
How behavioral analysis and social norms diagnostics can help implementers and practitioners design more effective interventions
Dr. Carolina Pimentel Corrêa.
- What are social norms and how do they shape consumer behavior? Why do they matter and who should consider them?
Social norms are the unwritten rules and expectations that shape how people behave within their communities, influencing decisions, opportunities, and access to resources. These norms can either reinforce barriers or create pathways for change, making them critical for those working to drive social and economic transformation. While social norms are often considered in discussions around inclusion, they are just as relevant for business, market systems, and economic development practitioners seeking broader, scalable impact. Understanding and considering social norms is key to understanding consumer and economic behaviors and unlocking scalable market changes.
Particularly important when examining norms is understanding the difference between a norm and an individual belief or personal perception. Many consumer studies conflate these concepts and therefore miss out on core insights around the drivers of consumer behavior. Norms can override formal policies and personal preferences.
For instance, in areas such as water access and use –a critical focus in many international development projects– these norms can override official guidelines. In the Karamoja region of Uganda for example, women are typically expected to bear the primary responsibility for fetching water, despite various local initiatives promoting gender equality.
Additionally, in Karamoja, traditional social norms govern irrigation practices, restricting irrigation to backyard gardens while leaving larger-scale crop cultivation reliant on rain. This norm can hinder the adoption of more sustainable methods. Social norms also influence livestock management, with expectations for free access to rivers and recognition of dry-season water needs, which may conflict with formal water management strategies. In some communities, sacred beliefs about rivers (viewing them as God’s gift) further challenge efforts to regulate water use. These deeply rooted social norms must be considered and engaged with in development programs to ensure effective, culturally sensitive interventions.
These ingrained norms can thus conflict with or undermine the intended effects of formal policies, making it essential for development practitioners to consider the power of norms when designing and implementing interventions.
- Call to action: Four steps to ensure that your program is intentionally integrating norms in design & implementation
- Map existing behaviors and social norms
Before implementing a program and designing specific interventions, invest time in learning the community’s unwritten rules and expectations regarding the project’s focus area.
Conducting deep interviews and running social norms diagnostic studies can help identify the local social norms profile, as these norms often influence behaviors far more than formal policies or external interventions.
Interventions restricting livestock’s access to rivers in Karamoja may face resistance due to cultural and religious beliefs that rivers are sacred gifts from God and should remain unmanaged. Additionally, livestock are highly valued, and the local social norms emphasize their proper care, including free access to the rivers. Designing interventions that consider these deep-rooted norms is essential for community acceptance and effectiveness.
As Bicchieri emphasizes, ignoring social norms can create resistance, while understanding them can open the door to meaningful behavioral change. Her theory shows that norms are upheld by what individuals observe others doing (empirical expectations) and what they believe others expect of them (normative expectations). Social change often occurs when norms begin to relax, creating space for new behaviors to emerge. Bicchieri’s framework highlights that this process is facilitated when individuals see others acting differently and perceive that others expect change too. Interventions can catalyze this shift by modeling new behaviors, fostering community dialogue, and demonstrating the benefits of alternative practices.
- Identify reference network
Understanding which networks hold the most sway over individuals in a community allows us to pinpoint the most effective entry points for changing behaviors. By identifying and analyzing these networks, practitioners can better understand how norms around issues like water use, sanitation, or collective resource management are formed, reinforced, and transmitted within a society.
Bicchieri’s work highlights the importance of reference networks –the groups or social circles whose behavior and approval individuals look to when making decisions. These networks can include family members, colleagues, religious leaders, or community figures who influence what is seen as acceptable behavior.
“Mapping the reference network is an essential part of understanding social norms and how to change them, because the norm has to change within the reference network” (Bicchieri, 2017, p.53).
A comprehensive social norms diagnostic study can provide this type of understanding about the reference network in a target population.
- Engage local influencers representing the reference network
To drive meaningful change in social norms, partnering with community leaders who influence collective behavior is crucial. Elders, religious figures, women’s groups, and other respected individuals often serve as reference networks and as the gatekeepers of tradition and social norms. Initiating conversations with these leaders about the community’s usual behaviors can help pave the way for new norms to be discussed and accepted.
Bicchieri emphasizes the importance of these influencers who act as catalysts for change by reshaping what communities perceive as acceptable or desirable behaviors. These leaders can amplify messages that align with the community’s values, encouraging gradual shifts toward new norms.
- Create visual or field demonstrations
Concrete examples of new behaviors can significantly influence empirical expectations –what people believe others typically do. Demonstrations and in-field action projects provide visible proof of the benefits of adopting new practices. For instance, in the Karamoja region, awareness campaigns that showcase the effects of river water contamination could help shift perceptions around water use.
These campaigns could promote the use of alternative water sources, such as valley tanks, troughs, and solar pumps, emphasizing the importance of adopting these specific sources for watering livestock to prevent the contamination of water sources used for domestic and agricultural purposes.
Bicchieri’s framework highlights that observing others adopting a new behavior increases the likelihood of community-wide acceptance, especially when individuals witness tangible benefits. Bicchieri explains, however, that changing cognitive scripts is neither linear nor simple. It “requires long-term, consistent exposure to examples of alternative behaviors” (Bicchieri, 2017, p. 206). She presents the case of soap operas and edutainment as examples with the potential to accelerate the process of norm abandonment.
- Use a gradual change approach
Social norms rarely shift overnight; gradual, incremental changes are often the most sustainable. Interventions can start small, focusing on achievable behavioral shifts that serve as building blocks for broader transformations. Bicchieri’s insights underline that when individuals see others adopting and benefiting from small changes, they’re more likely to follow suit, especially when those individuals are nearby, share similar circumstances, or possess relatable characteristics. This reinforces the importance of designing interventions that resonate with the community’s lived experiences.
In conclusion, a deep understanding of local social norms can provide practitioners with not only access to/adopt an evidence-based decision-making process but also the ability to implement interventions that are more sustainable and better reach target groups and regions by respecting local social and cultural boundaries.
Interested in working with us to apply the Behavioral Analysis and Norms Diagnostic in your project – email us at bizdev@marketshareassociates.com