Social norms govern human behavior and usually change slowly over time. While individuals’ willingness to sanction others is decisive for the enforcement of social norms and thus social stability, little is known about individual sanctioning behavior related to newly introduced social norms. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have used various tools to rapidly and actively introduce the new norm of wearing a face mask; this offers a unique setting to study the determinants of individuals’ willingness to sanction a cooperation norm. In a nationwide online survey in Germany, we find that higher levels of conscientiousness and neuroticism, but none of the economic preferences (time and risk), are significantly and robustly associated with a higher willingness to sanctioning norm violators. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between supervisors’ and their subordinates’ willingness to sanction norm violation, and we observe that females have a higher value for the appropriate fine for norm violating behavior than men. Our results shed light on the origins of individual compliance with newly introduced public policy measures that are meant to increase solidarity via the explicit shaping of new cooperation norms.

社会规范支配着人类的行为，并且通常会随着时间的推移而缓慢变化。虽然个人制裁他人的意愿对社会规范的执行和社会稳定具有决定性意义，但人们对与新引入的个人制裁行为相关的个人制裁行为知之甚少。社会规范。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，各国政府使用各种工具迅速、积极地引入了戴口罩的新规范；这为研究个人认可合作规范的意愿的决定因素提供了独特的环境。在德国的一项全国性在线调查中，我们发现，较高的责任心和神经质，但没有经济偏好（时间和风险），与制裁违反规范者的意愿显着且密切相关。此外，上司与其下属制裁违反规范的意愿之间存在很强的相关性，我们观察到女性对违反规范行为的适当罚款的价值高于男性。