• Inclusion
• Theory

• External Shocks

• Accommodating newcomers

Norms regulate cooperation in society but are sometimes threatened by norm violators. To sustain cooperation, people need to be willing to enforce norms by sanctioning norm violators. However, people may also act against the norm by facilitating the norm violator’s actions. Why people sometimes react to norm violators by enforcing the norm and other times by acting against the norm is an unresolved puzzle. We study whether responses to norm violations depend on the norm violator’s ethnic group membership. In a field experiment, confederates violate the norm of paying for public transport by attempting to free-ride. Confederates approach travelers who are about to go through check-in gates at Dutch train stations and request to follow them without checking in themselves. We observe whether travelers enforce the norm by rejecting this request or facilitate violating the norm by helping the confederates to free-ride. In total, 801 travelers were individually approached at three train stations by ten different confederates, five with a visibly native-majority background and five with a visibly ethnic-minority background. We find that confederates with a native-majority background are more likely to receive help with free-riding than confederates with an ethnic-minority background across all locations, travelers of all age groups, and all experimental sessions. Content analysis of the travelers’ responses to the free-riding request shows that these were more disapproving and less helpful toward confederates with an ethnic-minority background. Our findings reveal double standards in real-life behaviors toward norm violators with different ethnic backgrounds.

What factors cause people to react to norm violators by enforcing the norm or by facilitating norm violations?

• Collected during project

• Experiment
• Questionaire

Yes

• Structured
• Unstructured

The netherlands, the train stations at Woerden, Hilversum, and Amersfoort

01/04/2022

30/06/2022

No conflicts of interest