The growing role of digital learning environments in education poses new challenges to individuals’ self-regulated learning which may exacerbate self-control problems (i.e., procrastination) if not addressed. The present study explores the role of social norms in information systems to support university students by encouraging online learning. Based on a field experiment with 58 participants of an eighteen-week blended learning course, we investigate the impact of descriptive and injunctive normative feedback on participants’ online learning behavior. Specifically, we find that a small modification to the learning environment increases participants’ course-specific online learning time by 25.4%. The study provides additional evidence that this effect largely stems from a time segment in which the participants of the control group were disproportionately less active, potentially due to self-control problems. Ultimately, our findings have important implications for the design of digital learning environments to effectively support individuals in achieving their learning goals
