 Experimental methods: Eliciting and measuring social normsGary Charness, Eugen Dimant, Uri Gneezy and Erin Krupka Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 237, issue C Abstract: Eliciting social norms is essential for understanding a range of behaviors in economic contexts. This paper reviews key experimental approaches to social-norm measurement, comparing the methods, practical considerations, and specific conditions under which each is most effective. We discuss various social norm elicitation techniques, including coordination-based, opinion-based, and distributional approaches. Our findings suggest that coordination-game approaches are the most widely adopted and tested; they deliver robust results, particularly in contexts with a single dominant norm. Importantly, while early methods focused on eliciting mean or modal normative beliefs, recent work shifts focus to eliciting beliefs about the distribution of normative beliefs. This allows the researcher to draw inferences on the degree of uncertainty that underlies norm assessments. This paper aims to help experimentalists and practitioners choose suitable norm-elicitation methods that are aligned with research objectives and logistical constraints. Keywords: Methodology; Norm elicitation; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:237:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125003063 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107187 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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