The effect of normative information on pedestrian behaviour

Abstract

Unsafe pedestrian behaviour is one of the main causes of unnatural death around the world. This paper argues that an explanation for this problem is that in this type of context there is information about what people should do (injunctive normative information) and what people actually do (descriptive normative information) which might be incompatible with each other. Based on focus theory of normative conduct (Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren, 1990), an experiment in which participants had to describe (through a pencil trace) the route they would take to get from one point to another on a sidewalk was performed. An edited photograph was given to each participant containing only injunctive or descriptive information, none of these or both. The results showed that only the presence of injunctive information led to a higher proportion of safe traces, while the simultaneous activation of normative information led to unsafe traces, there being no differences with the rest of conditions. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.