Den här uppsatsen undersöker MMORPG-spelares uppfattningar och erfarenheter av toxiskt beteende. Huvudsyftet med uppsatsen är att ge bredare perspektiv om deskriptiva normativa uppfattningar kring toxiska beteenden bland MMORPG-spelare, hur detta påverkar spelarnas beteenden samt hur det påverkar spelarbasen. Studien utförs med en intervju-orienterad kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Utgångspunkten för studien är de teoretiska ramverken om deskriptiva normativa uppfattningar och online-hämningslöshetseffekten som utgör grunden för rekrytering av deltagarna samt intervjufrågorna. Studiens resultat påvisar att det finns indikationer på att det finns ytterligare faktorer som påverkar normaliseringen av toxiska beteenden hos individer än de som är direkt relaterade till spelandet. Studien visar att spelare anser att belöningar är en bättre lösning än bestraffningar för att förbättra deras beteenden. Deltagarnas egna beteenden förändrades i relation till deras egna uppfattningar huruvida spelsamhällets norm är att vara toxisk eller inte. Denna innebär en direkt påverkan av det normaliserade beteendet i den sociala miljön. Slutligen konstaterades att deltagarnas motivation att fortsätta spela minskade när de kommit i kontakt med toxiska beteenden. / This essay examines MMORPG players’ normative perceptions of toxic behavior. The primary purpose of this essay is to provide additional perspectives on normative perceptions about toxic behaviors among MMORPG players, how this affects player behaviors, and how it affects the player base. The study utilizes a qualitative research method with a theoretically essentially latent approach. The starting point for the study is the theoretical frameworks theory of normative beliefs and online disinhibition effect, which is the basis for recruitment of the participants and the interview questions. The results demonstrate additional aspects which affect the normalization of toxic behaviour other than gaming-related factors. Further, players believe that rewards are a better solution than penalties for improving their behavior. The participants’ behavior changed concerning their perceptions of whether the game’s norm is to be toxic or not. The players’ behavior is thus directly affected by the normalized behavior in the social environment. Finally, players describe motivation to continue playing decreased when they came in contact with toxic behaviour.

The social norms concept provides a fresh basis for thinking about how public health policies and campaigns impact health behaviour. Social norms offer much promise to the field of public health, nonetheless, the potential role of norms in changing health behaviour have not been fully embraced. This thesis demonstrates that one of the mechanisms by which national level policies (e.g. tobacco control) can promote health behaviour change, such as an increase in quit intentions, is by making smoking less normative and an undesirable behaviour. This study is vital as it provides a broad conceptualization of tobacco denormalisation and shows how its reasoning is able to influence normative beliefs and smoking behaviour. A review of literature was carried out to establish the generic origins of denormalisation as well as demonstrate that this approach (i.e. social norms) has been widely adopted in schools and college settings to influence health behaviour. As a broader perspective of this thinking was imperative to address public health issues at a societal level, tobacco control was employed to investigate how individual polices influence behaviour and normative beliefs. The research methodology used was pluralistic in nature, given that the majority of past tobacco control policy studies employed either quantitative or qualitative methods. Thus adopting both methods a richer amount of data would be obtained in order to generate an improved understanding of how public policy affects norms and smoking behaviour. To empirically examine the relationship between public policy, social norms and smoking behaviour a broad conceptualization was developed to investigate the normative pathways between national level tobacco policy effects on youth and adults’ smoking behaviour. Quantitative results from the longitudinal study, the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Scotland/UK survey, indicate that a comprehensive smoke-free law that covers, without exception, an entire nation (i.e. Scotland) has increased adult smokers’ perceived social unacceptability of smoking, to some extent higher in Scotland than rest of the UK which, in turn, is associated with quit intentions at follow-up, in both countries. The examination of data from the UK Youth Tobacco Policy Study (YTPS) also demonstrated that the influence of tobacco marketing awareness on adolescents’ smoking intentions is mediated by perceived norms. Prior to the enactment of the UK Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act (TAPA), higher levels of awareness of tobacco advertising and promotion were independently associated with higher levels of perceived sibling approval which, in turn, were positively related to smoking intentions. Independent paths from perceived smoking prevalence and benefits fully mediated the effects of advertising and promotion awareness on intentions, during and after the enactment of the TAPA. Results from the qualitative study generally supported the quantitative findings and provided new insights into how adolescents’ normative beliefs and smoking behaviour are influenced by tobacco control policies. The qualitative group discussion suggests that smoke-free legislation and anti-smoking ads influence perceptions of prevalence, acceptability and smoking behaviour. A number of theoretical implications were presented, including the belief that social norms campaigns and interventions must be focal and salient in individuals’ consciousness so as to effect the desired behaviour change. A theoretical framework of the various normative mechanisms should consequently be integrated into tobacco control policies and norm-based interventions to work in a synergistic manner to influence health-related behaviour. Practical implications of this conceptualization include the view that, instead of public health interventions focusing on conventional approaches (for example, scare tactics), an appropriate strategy would be to incorporate specific information that corrects normative misperceptions and ambiguities among referent populations at individual and societal levels, with consequential normative and health behaviour change. It is recommended that future research employing tobacco industry perceptions and possibly a descriptive norm as additional normative mediators, aside from unacceptability, would be of value to examine whether smoke-free legislation influences quitting partly via changing favourable tobacco industry perceptions, social acceptability of smoking and perceived prevalence of smoking. To sum up, the findings demonstrate that societal level policy measures such as smoke-free legislation and the TAPA are critical elements of a comprehensive tobacco control program that can significantly influence adult smokers’ quit intentions and reduce adolescents’ smoking intentions respectively, by signifying smoking to be less normative and to be socially unacceptable.