[MUSIC] When I introduce the topic of social norm creation, I explain that norms may emerge out of conventions, especially when those conventions acquire a significance they did not initially have. Think of a conventional mark, a tattoo or a conventional behavior, table manners, that came to signal group identity or status. Disregarding the convention damages all the group, breaking the code may break the group bond. Or in the case of manners, a single defection may instigate other defections, weakening the power of the signal and therefore the cohesion of the group. What is the difference between these type of norm emergence and the case of a norm that emerges to solve a collective action problem, producing a public good? In both cases deviance is punished and compliance possibly rewarded. In both cases there can be a collective action problem since even in the case of manners, individuals may need to be pushed to obey all the rules of etiquette. Yet, the important difference is that in the second case of norm creation there is an initial social dilemma. A collective action problem that a norm comes to remedy. The norm develops because private action create externalities. And the norm helps to provide a public good. The second case is the most relevant to many interventions. Particularly in the field of sanitation where a newly created norm helps to permanently abandon a harmful practice. Let us now look at a schematic process of norm creation of the second kind. First of all, people must have reasons to change their their behavior. They have to change their factual beliefs, and also their personal normative beliefs. For example, changing views about open defecation, it is a dirty practice, it can cause disease, will also change one's personal normative beliefs, both prudential and quasi-moral. Not only it is insanitary to practice it, it is also damaging other people has. However, we know that such change in beliefs will not be sufficient to motivate individual change, unless there is a collective decision to change. People get together and decide to do something different. Acting on that decision is fraught with uncertainties. Will all abide by the collective decision? Is there an individual temptation to continue with the old practice? There is awareness, that they face a social dilemma. This is the reason why as a group, they establish punishment for non-compliance. I must add that often when a village becomes open defecation free, that is also a positive sanction. It becomes a poster village for the newly established behavior and takes pride in it. They are doing something good for the entire community and compare favorably to other villages that still practice open defecation. So typically, individual sanctions are negative, but collective ones are positive. If punishment is legitimate. As it is agreed up on by the whole community we will witness the creation of normative expectations. There will be a shared sense that the community believes that all its member should behave in what is now considered the right, appropriate way. In our example, now all should use latrines. The success of normative expectation leading behavior on a new path will create new empirical expectation as behavior change will be observed. The complete dynamic of change is as follows. There are cases in which it may be difficult to create a new norm from scratch. A critical mass of people may be impossible to reach or there could be some ambiguity about certain activities especially since activity is not visible. In this case it maybe helpful to extend an existing norm. Hand washing is such a case. How can we convince people to wash hands? Disgust, again, is important, and the idea that fecal material might be present on hands has been reported to be a powerful motivator of hand washing with soap after using the toilet. An intervention in Ghana showed a TV commercial in which a purple smear was added to the hands of a woman exiting a toilet. The woman then prepared and served food to her children. The result of this ad was encouraging as it was reported that rates of hand washing with soap after toilet use went up by 13%, and by 41% before eating. In this case, the unsanitary behavior violated an important nurturing norm. You do not expose your children to dirty material, hence to harm. Other norms might be evoked. Good manners are an example. Shaking other people's hands with your dirty hands is not polite. It is not right to contaminate other people with your fecal material, and you expect others to behave in a similar, respectful way. Norms of purity males have been brought to mind. Contamination makes you impure. So, hand washing may be perceived as an extension of many norms that people readily adopt. In this case a new norm of hand washing emerges as part of some other powerful norm. Though it is less obvious whether someone washes his hands after using the toilet, there are ways to make it more visible. Let us now listen to interviews about sanitation and the tools that have been used to successfully change behavior. >> Washing hands is something that people are required to do as part of ablution for prayers. But washing hands after contact with is not a habit. So, it's not something people do, they don't even see importance of doing it. Most people just go into the latrine with a little bit of water for anal cleansing and they come out and that's it. So, it's not a habit, it's not something that people will go out of their way to do. Well, washing hands with soap is difficult for people in an environment where water is a problem. Washing hands with soap becomes a big issue for households, especially when you look sometimes at some of the areas where we do our programming. This is like a very dry country. It's mostly deserts. Water is a luxury. Water is a scarce commodity. So expecting especially children, that mothers would allow children to play around with water, that's a no go area. So it's not something that children are encouraged to do. In fact, most households see it as a waste of water, especially they have to walk long distances to get water. The Ghana hand washing with soap initiative was a very successful intervention. It set out to make hand washing with soap the acceptable norm among people. This was in, I think, 2001, 2003, in Ghana, as part of the global public-private partnership for hand washing with soap. And it was successful in that it was built on social markets and principles. It looked at what had made commercial markets ineffective, and built on it to promote hand washing with soap as the product. What it did was that it didn't focus on germs and disease and dirt. They use your help promoting things but they stepped outside and looked at how hand washing could be made the acceptable lifestyle issue. And what it did was that it built on disgust, okay. Disgust that if you don't wash your hands with soap you have yucky stuff on your hands that's you don't want to eat because they make you ill. It had a TV commercial where a mum preparing food for the family gets up and goes to the toilet and comes back and just washes her hands with water. And as she touches the food she leaves pink stains on the food. So you see the food with the pink stain going into the child's mouth and this was very effective. Of course now people are like, ooh, so that things on your hands, you can see that you eat and it was really, really effective. Within six months reported hand washing behavior moved from about 12% to 68%, which was really high for a six-month initiative. Hand washing, not washing hands with soap was seen as disgusting and yucky and horrible. So even in the school programs, even in the community engagement programs that we did, we got people to see how hands were contaminated so people could have a visual of what it was like if you didn't wash your hands with soap. And because of the issue of the disgust factor, they started sort of policing each other. So if you're going to buy food from a seller, and you don't see evidence that she washes her hands with soap, or she uses her spoon to scoop out the food for you, people would move away from here and not buy their food.
