Social Norms Shift Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Foods

Templeton, Emma; Stanton, Michael; Zaki, Jamil

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166286

Cited by 26 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(46 reference statements)

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“…Even though empirical findings in the health sciences have offered ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the influence of social norms on a wide range of health outcomes (e.g. Piliavin and Libby, 1986;Peterson et al, 2009;Gidycz et al, 2011;McAlaney and Jenkins, 2015;Berger and Caravita, 2016;Prestwich et al, 2016;Templeton et al, 2016), most of these empirical findings emerge from studies conducted in highincome countries; the most famous case being the use of social norms theory to reduce use of alcohol and recreational drugs in US college campuses (Borsari and Carey, 2003; Lewis and Neighbors, 2006;Prestwich et al, 2016). This narrow evidence base is particularly problematic given donors' and practitioners' recent interest in integrating social norms theory into health interventions in LMIC.…”

Section: Social Norms and Health Interventions In Lmicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using social norms theory for health promotion in low-income countries

Cislaghi¹,

Heise

2018

Health Promotion International

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SummarySocial norms can greatly influence people's health-related choices and behaviours. In the last few years, scholars and practitioners working in low-and mid-income countries (LMIC) have increasingly been trying to harness the influence of social norms to improve people's health globally. However, the literature informing social norm interventions in LMIC lacks a framework to understand how norms interact with other factors that sustain harmful practices and behaviours. This gap has led to short-sighted interventions that target social norms exclusively without a wider awareness of how other institutional, material, individual and social factors affect the harmful practice. Emphasizing norms to the exclusion of other factors might ultimately discredit norms-based strategies, not because they are flawed but because they alone are not sufficient to shift behaviour. In this paper, we share a framework (already adopted by some practitioners) that locates norm-based strategies within the wider array of factors that must be considered when designing prevention programmes in LMIC.

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Section: Social Norms and Health Interventions In Lmicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using social norms theory for health promotion in low-income countries

Cislaghi¹,

Heise

2018

Health Promotion International

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“…a shared rule of behaviour. Recent studies demonstrate the importance of social norms on eating behaviours and their role in shifting preferences towards healthy food [41]. The importance of dietary social norms is especially important in young adults, whose eating patterns typically become lifelong habits [42].…”

Section: (F ) Social Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delayed behavioural shifts undermine the sustainability of social–ecological systems

Lafuite¹,

Mazancourt²,

Loreau³

2017

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Natural habitat destruction and fragmentation generate a time-delayed loss of species and associated ecosystem services. As social-ecological systems (SESs) depend on a range of ecosystem services, lagged ecological dynamics may affect their long-term sustainability. Here, we investigate the role of consumption changes for sustainability, under a time-delayed ecological feedback on agricultural production. We use a stylized model that couples the dynamics of biodiversity, technology, human demography and compliance with a social norm prescribing sustainable consumption. Compliance with the sustainable norm reduces both the consumption footprint and the vulnerability of SESs to transient overshoot-and-collapse population crises. We show that the timing and interaction between social, demographic and ecological feedbacks govern the transient and long-term dynamics of the system. A sufficient level of social pressure (e.g. disapproval) applied on the unsustainable consumers leads to the stable coexistence of unsustainable and sustainable or mixed equilibria, where both defectors and conformers coexist. Under bistability conditions, increasing extinction debts reduces the resilience of the system, thus favouring abrupt regime shifts towards unsustainable pathways. Given recent evidence of large extinction debts, such results call for farsightedness and a better understanding of time delays when studying the sustainability of coupled SESs.

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“…a shared rule of behavior. Recent studies demonstrate the importance of social norms on eating behaviors [61] and their role in shifting preferences towards healthy food [62,63,64]. The importance of dietary social norms is especially important in young adults [65], whose eating patterns typically become life-long habits [66].…”

Section: Social Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foresight is required to enforce sustainability under time-delayed biodiversity loss

Lafuite

Loreau

2017

Preprint

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Natural habitat loss and fragmentation generate a time-delayed loss of species and associated ecosystem services. Since social-ecological systems (SESs) depend on a range of ecosystem services, lagged ecological dynamics may affect their long-term sustainability. Here, we investigate the role of consumption changes in sustainability enforcement, under a time-delayed ecological feedback on agricultural production. We use a stylized model that couples the dynamics of biodiversity, technology, human demography and compliance to a social norm prescribing sustainable consumption. Compliance to the sustainable norm reduces both the consumption footprint and the vulnerability of SESs to transient overshoot-and-collapse population crises. We show that the timing and interaction between social, demographic and ecological feedbacks govern the transient and long-term dynamics of the system. A sufficient level of social pressure (e.g. disapproval) applied on the unsustainable consumers leads to the stable coexistence of unsustainable and sustainable or mixed equilibria, where both defectors and conformers coexist. Under bistability conditions, increasing time delays reduces the basin of attraction of the mixed equilibrium, thus resulting in abrupt regime shifts towards unsustainable pathways. Given recent evidence of large ecological relaxation rates, such results call for farsightedness and a better understanding of lag effects when studying the sustainability of coupled SESs.

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Social Norms Shift Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Foods

Cited by 26 publications

References 48 publications

Using social norms theory for health promotion in low-income countries

Using social norms theory for health promotion in low-income countries

Delayed behavioural shifts undermine the sustainability of social–ecological systems

Foresight is required to enforce sustainability under time-delayed biodiversity loss

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