Do norms make preferences social? Supporting evidence from the field

We examine whether rule compliance predicts prosocial behavior. We proxy rule compliance by compliance with parking regulations and prosocial behavior via response rates to surveys. We find that surveys attached to legally parked cars are returned more often. •Our field study tests whether prosocial behavior is associated with norm compliance.•Our proxy for norm compliance is compliance with parking regulations.•We measure prosocial behavior as responding to a survey that we attached to cars.•We find a higher response rate for parking rule followers.