Persuasive Communication for Illegal Bicycle Parking

A Psychological Solution for Social Dilemmas

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted in order to investigate the effectiveness of persuasion, or persuasive communication, for restraining socially-undesirable-bicycle-parking behavior. In the experiment, subjects (n=99) were randomly assigned to four groups including a control group and three experimental groups in which subjects received different kinds of persuasive communication. The experimental data indicated that persuasive communication for restraining socially-undesirable-bicycle-parking behavior that instructed how to restrain it, actually decreased subjects' frequency of socially-undesirable-bicycle parking behavior by 30%.