Norms as Limited Resources

摘要

Despite its need for a constant supply of altruistic behavior, recycling has grown steadily in the United States over the past few decades, making it the most successful—and most puzzling—of the environmental norms. In this Article, Prof. Steven Hetcher uses the recycling norm as a means for teaching us about motivational assumptions regarding human behavior. In the past, scholars have taken an all-or-nothing approach toward the methodological assumption regarding human motivation; either people are basically narrowly self-interested or people are basically moral. This Article argues that the study of the recycling norm supports a third position, one that falls between these two extremes.