Everybody Thinks We Should but Nobody Does: How Combined Injunctive and Descriptive Norms Motivate Organ Donor Registration

The potential for deceased-donor organ transplants to save lives is severely limited by the number of people registered as donors around the world. Various national and regional health organizations often emphasize low registration rates (i.e., low descriptive norms) in an effort to demonstrate need and encourage registration. However, we predict and find that combining low descriptive norms with high injunctive norms, making salient the discrepancy between what people think they should do and what they actually do, results in greater organ donor registrations than communicating either descriptive or injunctive norms separately. We demonstrate these effects across three focal studies and two follow-up studies conducted online, in the laboratory, and in the field, and show that the findings are mediated by feelings of responsibility. We also demonstrate that making the situation feel psychologically close increases responsibility and intentions to register for low descriptive and high injunctive norms, to the level of combined norms. Our research contributes to the literature on norms and responsibility and can help policymakers and marketers design more effective communication strategies.