Residential mobility as a contextual factor undermining social norms for cooperation: Multilevel analyses of community data in Japan

Social norms sustain community cooperation through sanctions against free riders. However, previous studies have argued that norms are ineffective for individuals who often relocate, because ostracism, a form of sanction, is not a threat to them. In addition to this individual-level effect, we investigated the possibility that residential mobility at the community level has unique effects. That is, a place with high residential mobility may create social contexts in which people anticipate others to disrespect norms, and as a result, people, including non-movers, may ignore norms (i.e., contextual effect). This study analyzed two separate large-scale survey datasets (total N = 7,597) from Japan using multilevel modeling. We consistently found that the association between perceived norms and cooperation was weaker in communities with higher mobility, including both movers and non-movers. The findings suggest that macro-level residential mobility appears to affect the social contexts that underpin norms.