Conceptual structure and practical application: Bicchieri’s approach to Social Norms

Abstract

For a deep understanding of collective action problems, it is essential to clarify the various types of behaviour we observe. One category is represented by social norms, informal rules of behaviour that must satisfy certain conditions in order to be recognized. In this context, professor Bicchieri not only presents a theoretical model that defines what a social norm is and why people are willing to conform, but she also provides, in her latest book Norms in the Wild, an overview of how her model may actually be applied in the field, through interventions capable of changing stable but harmful social norms.