Social comparisons, status and driving behavior

Yan Chen, Fangwen Lu and Jinan Zhang

Journal of Public Economics, 2017, vol. 155, issue C, 11-20

Abstract: The establishment of desirable social norms is an integral part of a well-functioning civil society. While recent evidence has demonstrated that social comparison can affect behavior in a variety of contexts, it is not clear what type of comparative social information is most effective. Using a large-scale field experiment to study driving practices, we sent text messages containing different types of social information to drivers in Tsingtao, China. We find two types of social information to be particularly effective in reducing traffic violations: the driving behavior of those similar to oneself and the driving behavior of those with high-status cars. Our results indicate that the combination of descriptive norms with social status is a cost-effective yet powerful intervention for establishing better driving behavior in emerging markets.

Keywords: Social comparison; Status; Randomized field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272717301263
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:155:y:2017:i:c:p:11-20

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.08.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().