How laws affect the perception of norms: Empirical evidence from the lockdown

Abstract

Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

Fig 1. Mobility patterns in the UK.

These figures plot the day-fixed effects of a specification that regresses a measure of mobility on days as well as Covid deaths and confirmed cases. The outcome variable is mobility data made publicly available by Google at https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/. It characterizes in percent how many individuals spend time in (a) recreational areas, (b) parks, (c) transit, and (d) stores and pharmacy relative to a baseline. This baseline is the average number of visit on the same weekday between January 3rd and February 6th. A negative value thus means that there are fewer people at a given place than in the baseline period. The unit of observation is percent and the coefficients have to be interpreted as percentage points.

Fig 2. Timeline of the policies implemented in the control group.

The figure reports the fraction of countries in the control group where the corresponding policy was enforced on each day provided on the x-axis.

Fig 3. Time pattern of perceived social norms in the UK and the control group.

The figure reports the day-fixed effects along with their 95% confidence intervals from separate regressions in the UK and in the control group of the perceived social norm measured in the survey about (a) social gatherings, (b) handshaking, (c) stores closure and (d) a total curfew, controlling for country, age, gender, education, and income-fixed effects, as well as household composition. Standard errors are clustered at the country-gender level.

Fig 4. Before-after comparison of misperceptions in the UK.

Discrepancy between the norm and the individual perception of the norm in the UK before and after March 23. The horizontal line in the middle of the box characterizes the median. The upper (lower) ends of the box characterizes the 75th (25th) percentile. The upper (lower) ends of the vertical lines are the upper (lower) adjacent values. Points above (below) are outliers.

Fig 5. Time pattern of the misperceptions in the UK and the control group.

The figure reports the day-fixed effects along with their 95% confidence intervals from separate regressions in the UK and in the control group of the misperception about (a) social gatherings, (b) handshaking, (c) stores closure and (d) a total curfew, controlling for country, age, gender, education, and income-fixed effects, as well as household composition. Standard errors are clustered at the country-gender level.