Date: Tuesday, 17 December 2024, at 12:15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room Bruguier Pacini, DEM
Speaker and Title:
Lorenzo Pinna (Università di Siena & Università Jaume I)
Misperception of Smartphone Use
Abstract:
Misperception of Social Norms are widespread across various domains. The implications of misperceiving others’ behavior reveals a tendency in distorted behavior to those who are affected by. In this paper, we employ an online survey RCT with an EU representative sample of students enrolled in tertiary education. The aim is to test whether there exists misperception of smartphone use concerning own and reference group usage. We connect the source of misperception of our own usage to the normative expectation about using the smartphone (injunctive strength of the norm). Concerning the reference group usage, we test whether a social factor may be the source of empirical expectation bias: Namely, the Friendship Paradox (FP) experienced through social networking sites. We include a light experiment which aims at providing truthful information about others’ smartphone use and to check, in a follow-up survey, whether we can observe behavioral change among treated subjects. The aim of the survey is to explore avenues to embrace healthier digital habits by our population. Finally, this study is the first to tackle the problem of extensive screen time with a social norm approach through a consistent sample (N=8000). Hence, a confirmation of our hypothesis could shed the possibility to design possible policies based on our results.