<p> The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between perceived norms of heavy peer alcohol use and self-reported heavy alcohol use among college students from a large public university. A total of 865 participants completed a survey in Fall 2008 and 506 of those participants completed the follow-up survey in Spring 2009. As hypothesized, the perceived injunctive norm was found to predict additional unique variance in heavy alcohol use above and beyond gender, year in school, residence hall, retrospective high school alcohol use and the perceived descriptive norm. The interaction between the perceived injunctive norm and perceived descriptive norm was not significant in the prediction of heavy alcohol use, as hypothesized. This suggests that the combined effect of the perceived injunctive norm and perceived descriptive norm in predicting heavy alcohol use is additive and not multiplicative. In a secondary hypothesis, the relationship between the perceived descriptive norm and heavy alcohol use was stronger for males than females. Lastly, as predicted, the results revealed that the relationship between perceived norms of heavy alcohol use and self-reported heavy alcohol use are stronger among more proximal than distal groups. These results suggest that social norms marketing campaigns aimed at reducing heavy alcohol use among college students should include the injunctive norm, target males, and use more proximal reference groups such as the student&rsquo;s own residence hall rather than more distal reference groups such as the typical university student.</p>

<p> Subjective norms (family members and close friends) between the ages of 18 and 34 who were part of the SurveyMonkey Audience were part of this quantitative study. The study examined those more likely to share/retransmit the belief-based informational advertisement related messages of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), consumer health, and politics with/to college students between the ages of 18 and 24. For organizations to more efficiently and productively target college students with their informational advertisement related messages, they must gain a better understanding of the types of messages more likely to be previewed and shared/retransmitted by subjective norms. This study examined (a) the frequency in which subjective norms utilized Facebook to communicate with college students, (b) willingness of subjective norms toward previewing certain types of informational advertisement messages on Facebook, and (c) willingness of subjective norms to share/retransmit certain types of informational advertisement messages on Facebook. An online survey was administered utilizing a SurveyMonkey audience platform. A total of 173 participants volunteered to complete the online survey. The results indicated that the strength of the relational tie of a subjective norm was not significantly correlated to their willingness to share/retransmit informational advertisement messages. Gender of the subjective norm was a better predictor of who is more willing to share/retransmit certain types of informational advertisement messages with/to college students on Facebook. This study concluded with implications for practice and future research recommendations.</p>