Descriptive social norms and herders' social insurance participation in Mongolia: A survey experiment

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines whether descriptive social norms affect one's intention to participate in voluntary social insurance in Mongolia. It reports the results of a survey experiment conducted in September 2020 among herders, whose rate of participation in voluntary social insurance is low and who presumably lack information about others' behaviours with respect to social insurance enrollment. Building upon prior research on descriptive social norms, we hypothesise that herders would be more willing to participate in voluntary social insurance when given information that many others are participating. The respondents were randomly assigned to two groups: one group received information that many others were participating in social insurance, and the other received information that the participation rate was low. We find that those who were given information on the high participation rate expressed a greater willingness to participate in social insurance in the future than the other group.