Group norm violations in an online environmental social network: Effects on impression formation and intergroup judgments

Abstract

Much research has demonstrated the power of social norms to affect proenvironmental behavior and conservation-related attitudes and beliefs in traditional “offline” social contexts. With the emergence of social media and citizen science platforms that allow for socially coordinated conservation efforts at scale comes a need to better understand the influence of social norms in online contexts. The present experiment explored effects of norm violations on impression formation and intergroup judgments within the context of Habitat Network, a socially networked mapping application where users create and share virtual representations (maps) of their properties. Results revealed that when participants viewed a map depicting the violation of a strongly held group norm—namely, the presence of an outdoor (vs. indoor) pet cat—they judged the map owner as significantly less likely to engage in a variety of proenvironmental behaviors. Importantly, this effect emerged despite evidence that the owner was already engaging in various sustainable practices. Moreover, the effect was mediated by the perceived quality of wildlife habitat represented by the map and moderated by participants’ group membership status (as a cat owner) in a manner consistent with theories of impression formation and intergroup judgments. We discuss implications for social cognition and intergroup relations in proenvironmental online contexts.