Studies on minimal rule behaviour: Formal rules in public places

The present paper is concerned with the effect of different characteristics of behavioural prescriptions in order to study what we call 'minimal rule behaviour'. With this term we refer to prescriptions for which there is no visible rationale or social convention. Two field studies were conducted in the subway of Rotterdam to investigate the effect of three dimensions of r ules: (1) the relevance of the prescription, (2) the origin of the prescrip tion, and (3) the level of imperativeness. A total of 1241 observations wer e made and 611 short interviews were held. The results show that the mere p resence of a written behavioural prescription has a very strong effect on a ctual behaviour. In a third study the semantic aspects of behavioural presc riptions were studied. For this study a questionnaire was administered to 4 01 undergraduate students. The results indicated a severity factor (related to imperativeness) and a meaningfulness factor (related to the presence of an explanation). Furthermore, increasing the imperativeness of a rule had two countervailing effects: it both increased the rule's severity and its m eaninglessness. Finally, in study 3 we found a clear effect of imperativene ss on behavioural intentions, an effect that could not be ascertained in st udies 1 and 2.