Believe It or Not: Examining to the Emergence of New Drinking Norms in College.

Abstract This paper examines the impact of a six-month social norms marketing intervention designed to reduce alcohol use among students attending a small, private university. Analyses of baseline and follow-up data are presented as well as data dosage and saturation levels of the norm marketing campaign and on student reactions to the social norm marketing messages. Results indicate that little change in student alcohol use or perception of drinking norms occurred following the social norms intervention. A gender effect was noted in the analysis with female students experiencing declines in alcohol use. Barriers to program success particularly with regards to the perceived believability of the social norm messages are discussed. Introduction While there is evidence attesting to the success of social norm interventions in reducing alcohol consumption among college students (Hannes & Spear, 1996; Barnett, Far & Mauss, 1996; Peeler, Far & Miller, 2000; Johannessen, Collins, Mils-Novoa & Glider, 2000; Glider, Midyett, Mils-Novoa, Johannessen & Collins; 2001), some social norm theorists and practitioners have begun to turn their attention to the systematic examination of norm marketing interventions that have met with limited success. Recently, Clapp, Russell and DeJong (2001) reported on a failed social norm intervention. In their study of a semester-long social intervention, these researchers found that students did not understand the message and that the message and the image used in the media presentations were incongruent. Reflecting on failures such as this, Berkowitz (2001 a; 2001 b) has suggested that there could be a number of factors that account for social norm campaigns that experience limited or no success including confusing media images, unreliable message sources, and insufficient dosage. An assortment of contextual factors and conditions within a college or university such as an institution's unique culture can also potentially affect the success of social norm marketing campaigns. The importance of social context in creating new norms cannot be minimized for as Fine (2001, p162) asserts, "Norms are not separate from interaction . [B]y conceiving norms as part of a locally constituted interaction order and as belonging to the cultural domain, the vibrancy and vitality of norms as they are lived can be appreciated. " Contextual dynamics within a college or university may produce among students extreme defensiveness and outright resistance to marketed norms. This suggests that the meaning and functions of alcohol use and related misperceptions among students (Berkowitz, 2001a) and additionally the meanings that students construct of norm marketing interventions must be appreciated. For instance, whether marketed norms are "believed" by students and are seen as credible may have a significant impact on the success of marketing moderate drinking norms. Werch and his colleagues (2000) note that the lack of believability and credibility of marketed social norm messages may have accounted for the negligible results they observed in their study of a social norm intervention. The majority of the research on social norm marketing interventions has, understandably, focused on evaluative questions of outcome and impact (Haines & Spear, 1996; Barnett et al., 1996; Peeler et al., 2000; Werch et al., 2000; Johannessen et al., 2000; Glider et al., 2001). At present, however, there is a paucity of research examining college students' reactions to the messages being marketed to them through such interventions. The lack of data on how students respond to norm marketing campaigns is perhaps not surprising given that many social norm theorists and practitioners generally accept the proposition that students will experience some initial degree of skepticism to any effort designed to "correct" their misperception of college drinking (Perkins, 1997; Berkowitz, 1999). …