The Influence Of Social Norm Consistency On Sugar-Free Beverage Consumption And Its Moderating Mechanism

Focus Theory of Normative Conduct,which has been a hot topic of research in the field of social norms since its introduction,divides social norms into two categories: descriptive norms,which are the typical practices of most people,and imperative norms,in which people hold explicitly favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward a behavior.The two types of norms are often presented simultaneously,yet past research has focused on the effects of separate norms,with less research on the effects of social norm consistency on behavior and a lack of mechanistic research.In this paper,we address the field of sugar-free beverage consumption and introduce obesity anxiety and information sources as internal and external factors to investigate their effects on the relationship between social norm consistency and sugar-free beverage consumption.There are three experiments in this paper;Experiment 1 is a one-way betweensubjects design that examines the effect of social norm consistency on sugar-free beverage consumption.Experiment 2 is a 2×2 between-subjects design to investigate the moderating role of obesity anxiety in the relationship between normative consistency and sugar-free beverage consumption.Experiment 3 was a 2 × 2 betweensubjects design that explored the moderating role of information sources in the relationship between normative inconsistency and sugar-free beverage consumption.The main findings obtained were as follows.(1)Social norm consistency has a significant effect on sugar-free beverage consumption.High descriptive norms and high imperative norms,and high descriptive norms and low imperative norms both positively predicted sugar-free beverage consumption,and the difference between them was not significant.(2)The effect of social norm consistency on sugar-free beverage consumption was moderated by obesity anxiety,i.e.,sugar-free beverage consumption was significantly affected by norm consistency initiation for subjects with high obesity anxiety,but not for subjects with low obesity anxiety.(3)The effect of social norm inconsistency on sugar-free beverage consumption was moderated by information sources in the high descriptive norm low imperative norm condition,and the descriptive norm dominance effect was buffered,i.e.,the influence of information sources on subjects’ sugar-free beverage consumption was significant in the high descriptive norm low imperative norm condition,and subjects were more willing to obey the imperative norm.In contrast,in the high imperative norm low descriptive norm condition,the information source effect was not significant.