This paper shows that interventions based on social norms and on increasing the visibility of people's decisions to others (“decision observability”) present promising pathways of generating public support for renewable energy development. In a laboratory experiment (n = 300), we show that social norms and decision observability increase support for renewable energy, even at a financial cost to oneself: When exposed to pro-environmental social norms, participants donated 35% more money to an existing renewable energy initiative than participants in the control condition (Cohen's d = 0.35). Participants whose decisions were observable to others donated 23% more compared to control (d = 0.23). And participants exposed to both treatments (their decisions being observed by others and learning about norms) donated 69% more compared to control (d = 0.67). In addition, our treatments had a positive effect on participants' post-decisional emotions of happiness and pride, which partly alleviates existing concerns about possible adverse side-effect of social influence interventions. Suggestions for policy makers and for future research in this area are presented.

本文表明，基于社会规范和提高人们对他人决策的可见性（“决策可观察性”）的干预措施提供了为可再生能源发展产生公众支持的有希望的途径。在实验室实验 ( n  = 300) 中，我们表明社会规范和决策可观察性增加了对可再生能源的支持，即使对自己造成经济损失：当暴露于有利于环境的社会规范时，参与者向现有的现有系统捐赠了 35% 的资金可再生能源倡议比控制条件下的参与者（Cohen's d  = 0.35）。与对照组（d = 0.23)。与对照组相比，接受两种治疗的参与者（他们的决定被其他人观察并了解规范）捐赠了 69%（d  = 0.67）。此外，我们的治疗对参与者的幸福和自豪感做出了决定后的积极影响，这在一定程度上缓解了人们对社会影响干预可能产生的不利副作用的担忧。提出了对政策制定者和该领域未来研究的建议。