We study the broken windows theory with a field experiment in a shared area of a workplace in academia (department common room). We explore academics' and postgraduate students' behaviour under an order condition (clean environment) and a disorder condition (messy environment). We find strong support that signs of disorderly behaviour triggers littering. In the disorder treatment 59% of the subjects litter compared to 18% in the order condition. The results remain robust when controlling compared to previous studies for a large set of factors in a multivariate analysis. When academic staff members and postgraduate students observe that others violated the social norm of keeping the common room clean the probability of littering increases ceteris paribus by around 40 percent.
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Paper provided by Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) in its series CREMA Working Paper Series with number
2009-21.
Find related papers by JEL classification: Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
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