Conserve...C'mon, Everybody's Doing It

You've seen those door hangers in the hotel bathroom, right? The ones that encourage everyone to reuse the towels? 

These door hangers will typically rely on the "Save the Planet" line of reasoning. The environmental benefits of electricity and water conservation. It's you're gut instinct, isn't it? Sell somebody on the merits of conservation, and they'll conserve.

Turns out there are a fair number of people for whom the "Save the Planet" message finds fertile ground. Hook, line, sinker. They'll reuse their towels.  But there is a larger group of people for whom the social norm argument is much more persuasive. 

Somebody, somewhere performed a hotel door-hanger study. There were two sets of text: one with your typical "Save the Planet" message, and another which mentions 75 percent of hotel guest reused their towels and asked this guest to do likewise. 

The research documented a 20 percent increase in towel reuse when the habit was more of a social norm than conservation effort.