The Integrated Framework of Compliance with Law as Social Influence: When Law Changes Behaviors

Treating law as another social communication aimed at influencing individuals, this chapter provides the antecedent conditions necessary for law to create behavioral and attitudinal change. First, it briefly summarizes Kelman’s three processes of social influences and its applications in policy as well as research. It, then, adapts and expands these motivational processes to understand when and under what conditions laws can influence individuals. It identifies three routes for such influence—compliance through acquiescence, compliance through identification, and compliance through internalization. Each of the three processes has different social and institutional antecedent conditions required to trigger them and influence individuals differently.