Abstract
For a policy-maker promoting the end of a harmful tradition, conformist social influence is a compelling mechanism. If an intervention convinces enough people to abandon the tradition, this can spill over and induce others to follow. A key objective is thus to activate such spillovers and amplify an intervention's effects. With female genital cutting as a motivating example, we develop empirically informed analytical and simulation models to examine this idea. Even if conformity pervades decision-making, spillovers can range from irrelevant to indispensable. Our analysis highlights three considerations. First, ordinary forms of individual heterogeneity can severely limit spillovers, and understanding the heterogeneity in a population is essential. Second, although interventions often target samples of the population biased towards ending the harmful tradition, targeting a representative sample is a more robust way to achieve spillovers. Finally, if the harmful tradition contributes to group identity, the success of spillovers can depend critically on disrupting the link between identity and tradition.
Highlights
Harmful traditions create a basic conflict 1
The policy maker stands in direct opposition to the norms and values of the target population 3
The policy maker targets a proportion φ of the population, and targeted individuals are directly exposed to the intervention
Summary
Harmful traditions create a basic conflict 1. They reflect the values and traditions of their respective cultures [2,3], and tolerance of cultural differences implies some degree of acceptance. A commitment to cross-cultural standards like universal human rights 4 and the idea that cultures can evolve in destructive ways 5 suggests exactly the opposite response. A policy maker who favours the latter view can intervene to disrupt a harmful tradition and steer cultural change in an alternative direction. The policy maker stands in direct opposition to the norms and values of the target population 3. This is the basic conflict of applied cultural evolution
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