Experiment In Uganda Research Articles

Disaster risk reduction measures and farmers choices: a discrete choice experiment in Uganda

ABSTRACT Climate change induces high and erratic rainfall which triggers landslides and floods. With the increasing population and food needs, households in mountainous, densely populated areas turn fragile ecosystems into farms. This exacerbates landslide and flood risks requiring Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) measures. Tree planting and diversion channels are among the recommended measures for farmers but their adoption remains low. Current studies assessing barriers to adoption ignore farmers’ opinions regarding the kind of trees or diversion channels preferred. We apply a Discrete Choice Experiment to evaluate how information delivered through videos impacts preferences for the DRR measures. Plot-level data were collected from 319 farmers from Kasese, Bundibugyo, Bushenyi and Buhweju in Uganda – districts prone to landslides and floods. The mixed logit model reveals a general preference for risk-reducing attributes of DRR measures. Using the conditional logit model to analyze split samples reveals that information influences preferences for tree planting, while preferences for diversion channels were hardly changed. Plot characteristics did not strongly explain the differences in preferences. Our study indicates that information specific to DRR measures in extension programmes would increase the adoption of such measures.

The limits of awards for anti‐corruption: Experimental and ethnographic evidence from Uganda

AbstractConventional anti‐corruption approaches focus on detecting and punishing the misuse of public office. These approaches are often ineffective in settings where social norms do not support reporting and punishing corruption. Attempting to build anti‐corruption norms, we conducted a field experiment in Uganda that offered elected, local leaders the chance to earn awards for overseeing development projects according to legal guidelines. We then conducted a second field experiment that informed other leaders and the public about the award winners. Offering leaders the chance to earn recognition did not improve the management of projects or change leaders’ norms about corruption. Informing other leaders and residents about the award winners also did not change behaviors or attitudes related to corruption. A paired ethnographic study shows that the possibility for recognition generated excitement but was not able to overcome resignation by local leaders. Our study provides some of the first experimental evidence about using awards to motivate public officials to act with integrity and to build anti‐corruption norms among both leaders and the public. The results imply that awards have limited effects for anti‐corruption in settings with endemic corruption and where they cannot be used instrumentally by awardees.

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-year Field Experiment in Uganda

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-year Field Experiment in Uganda

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-Year Field Experiment in Uganda

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-Year Field Experiment in Uganda

Effect of Participation and Alignment on the Sustainability of Development Aid Output: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda

Effect of Participation and Alignment on the Sustainability of Development Aid Output: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda

Co-ethnic bias and policing in an electoral authoritarian regime: Experimental evidence from Uganda

Why do people cooperate with police in multi-ethnic societies? For scholars of comparative politics and international relations, examining the effects of ethnicity on patterns of conflict, cooperation, and state repression remains a foundational endeavor. Studies show individuals who share ethnicity are more likely to cooperate to provide public goods. Yet we do not know whether co-ethnic cooperation extends to the provision of law and order and, if so, why people might cooperate more with co-ethnic police officers. In the context of policing, I theorize co-ethnic bias affects interactions between people and the police because individuals prefer officers who share their ethnicity and fear repression more when encountering non-co-ethnic officers. Using a conjoint experiment in Uganda, I demonstrate that individuals prefer reporting crimes to co-ethnic officers, even after controlling for potential confounders. Broadly, this result is strongest among individuals with no trust in the police, the courts, or the political authorities. These findings have important implications for the politics of policing, conflict, and social order.

Couples' Preferences for "2 in 1" Multipurpose Prevention Technologies to Prevent Both HIV and Pregnancy: Results of a Discrete Choice Experiment in Uganda and Zimbabwe.

End-user input early in biomedical product development may optimize design to support high uptake and adherence. We interviewed 400 couples (800 total participants) in Uganda and Zimbabwe to assess their preferences for multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) for HIV and pregnancy prevention. Using a discrete choice experiment, couples made a series of choices between hypothetical MPTs, including oral tablets and vaginal rings, inserts, and films and completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire assessing sociodemographic and behavioral measures. Most couples preferred presented MPTs over male condoms. Couples’ MPT choices in both countries were influenced most by the combination of product form and dosing frequency, with monthly dosing preferred over daily. Analysis highlighted differences by country as to which side effects were most important: Ugandan couples placed greater importance on effects on the vaginal environment during sex, whereas Zimbabwean couples placed more importance on changes to menstruation and other side effects (headache, cramps). Couples’ preferences signaled an openness to new product forms and more frequent dosing if preferred characteristics of other attributes were achieved.

Owning It: Accountability and Citizens’ Ownership over Oil, Aid, and Taxes

Government accountability is severely lacking in many developing countries, yet we know relatively little about the causal dynamics that produce citizen demands for greater responsiveness. We argue that a sense of ownership over public money heightens expectations for government services and induces expressive demands for accountability, and we apply the new theory in sub-Saharan Africa. Results from a series of lab-in-the-field experiments in Uganda and Ghana and from a nationally representative survey-based field experiment in Uganda all demonstrate that higher feelings of ownership over public revenues significantly increase citizens’ accountability pressures on leaders. Furthermore, simple interventions can significantly increase feelings of revenue ownership over oil and aid windfalls, producing demands for accountability indistinguishable from taxes.

Spillover Effects of Girls’ Empowerment on Brothers’ Competitiveness: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Uganda

AbstractWe use data from a lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda to examine the effect of empowering girls on their brothers’ competition preferences. Our identification strategy exploits random as...

Covariate selection for generalizing experimental results: Application to a large-scale development program in Uganda

AbstractGeneralizing estimates of causal effects from an experiment to a target population is of interest to scientists. However, researchers are usually constrained by available covariate information. Analysts can often collect many fewer variables from population samples than from experimental samples, which has limited applicability of existing approaches that assume rich covariate data from both experimental and population samples. In this article, we examine how to select covariates necessary for generalizing experimental results under such data constraints. In our concrete context of a large-scale development program in Uganda, although more than 40 pre-treatment covariates are available in the experiment, only 8 of them were also measured in a target population. We propose a method to estimate a separating set—a set of variables affecting both the sampling mechanism and treatment effect heterogeneity—and show that the population average treatment effect (PATE) can be identified by adjusting for estimated separating sets. Our algorithm only requires a rich set of covariates in the experimental data, not in the target population, by incorporating researcher-specific constraints on what variables are measured in the population data. Analysing the development experiment in Uganda, we show that the proposed algorithm can allow for the PATE estimation in situations where conventional methods fail due to data requirements.

Nutrient limitations regulate soil greenhouse gas fluxes from tropical forests: evidence from an ecosystem-scale nutrient manipulation experiment in Uganda

Abstract. Soil macronutrient availability is one of the abiotic controls that alters the exchange of greenhouse gases (GHGs) between the soil and the atmosphere in tropical forests. However, evidence on the macronutrient regulation of soil GHG fluxes from central African tropical forests is still lacking, limiting our understanding of how these biomes could respond to potential future increases in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) deposition. The aim of this study was to disentangle the regulation effect of soil nutrients on soil GHG fluxes from a Ugandan tropical forest reserve in the context of increasing N and P deposition. Therefore, a large-scale nutrient manipulation experiment (NME), based on 40 m×40 m plots with different nutrient addition treatments (N, P, N + P, and control), was established in the Budongo Central Forest Reserve. Soil carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes were measured monthly, using permanently installed static chambers, for 14 months. Total soil CO2 fluxes were partitioned into autotrophic and heterotrophic components through a root trenching treatment. In addition, soil temperature, soil water content, and nitrates were measured in parallel to GHG fluxes. N addition (N and N + P) resulted in significantly higher N2O fluxes in the transitory phase (0–28 d after fertilization; p<0.01) because N fertilization likely increased soil N beyond the microbial immobilization and plant nutritional demands, leaving the excess to be nitrified or denitrified. Prolonged N fertilization, however, did not elicit a significant response in background (measured more than 28 d after fertilization) N2O fluxes. P fertilization marginally and significantly increased transitory (p=0.05) and background (p=0.01) CH4 consumption, probably because it enhanced methanotrophic activity. The addition of N and P (N + P) resulted in larger CO2 fluxes in the transitory phase (p=0.01), suggesting a possible co-limitation of both N and P on soil respiration. Heterotrophic (microbial) CO2 effluxes were significantly higher than the autotrophic (root) CO2 effluxes (p<0.01) across all treatment plots, with microbes contributing about two-thirds of the total soil CO2 effluxes. However, neither heterotrophic nor autotrophic respiration significantly differed between treatments. The results from this study suggest that the feedback of tropical forests to the global soil GHG budget could be disproportionately altered by increases in N and P availability over these biomes.

How Repression Affects Public Perceptions of Police: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Uganda

What are the effects of state repression on public perceptions of police? And to what extent are these effects uniform or conditional on individuals’ loyalty to political authorities? I argue that repression by the police negatively affects how people evaluate the police, especially among those who do not support the ruling party. People who oppose the regime are more likely to fear the police following a repressive event relative to regime supporters. To test this argument, I leverage a unique research design opportunity that emerges from the social media tax protest led by Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (also known as Bobi Wine) and subsequent selective repression by the Uganda Police Force while a nationally representative survey on police and security was being administered in Uganda. I demonstrate selective repression of protesters decreased support for the police. These effects are largely driven by political loyalty; repression has a stronger effect on how members of the opposition evaluate the police relative to incumbent supporters.

Do Marketers Matter for Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda

Promoting growth by differentiating products is a core tenet of marketing. However, establishing and quantifying marketing’s causal impact on firm growth, while critical, can be difficult. This article examines the effects of a business support intervention in which international professionals from different functional backgrounds (e.g., marketing, consulting) volunteered time to help Ugandan entrepreneurs improve growth. Findings from a multiyear field experiment show that entrepreneurs who were randomly matched with volunteer marketers significantly increased firm growth: on average, monthly sales grew by 51.7%, monthly profits improved by 35.8%, total assets increased by 31.0%, and number of paid employees rose by 23.8%. A linguistic analysis of interactions between volunteers and entrepreneurs indicates that the marketers spent more time on product-related topics than other volunteers. Further mechanism analyses indicate that the marketers helped the entrepreneurs focus on premium products to differentiate in the marketplace. In line with the study’s process evidence, firms with greater market knowledge or resource availability benefited significantly more than their peers when matched with volunteer marketers. As small-scale businesses form the commercial backbone of most emerging markets, their performance and development are critically important. Marketers’ positive impact on these businesses highlights the need for the field’s increased presence in emerging markets.

Inequality aversion, self-interest and social connectedness

Abstract The amount we give often depends on how closely connected we are to those we are giving to. However, economic models typically ignore the impact that social connections have on giving behaviour. To address this, this paper proposes a utility function which intertwines preferences relating to social connectedness with inequality aversion and self-interest. This model is tested using behaviour observed in a modified three-person dictator game from an incentivised lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda (n=156). Preference parameters are estimated at the individual-level and the Dirichlet distribution is used to flexibly model ‘noise’ in decision making. Results show that social connectedness has large and significant effects on giving; with distinctions between self-other and between-other trade-offs emerging. Giving behaviour is found to be complex and extensively heterogeneous, yet, the model proposed explains and fits the observed behaviour well.

Making Entrepreneurs: Returns to Training Youth in Hard Versus Soft Business Skills

We study the medium-term impacts of the Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) program, an innovative in-residence 3-week mini-MBA program for high school students modeled after western business school curricula and adapted to the Ugandan context. The program featured two separate treatments: the hard-skills MBA features a mix of approximately 75% hard skills and 25% soft skills; the soft skills curriculum has the reverse mix. Using data on 4400 youth from a nationally representative sample in a 3-arm field experiment in Uganda, the 3.5 year follow-up demonstrated that training was effective in improving both hard and soft skills, but only soft skills were directly linked to improvements in self-efficacy, persuasion, and negotiation. The skill upgrade was rewarded in substantially higher earnings; 32.1% and 29.8% increases in earnings for those who attended hard- and soft-training, respectively, most of which, was generated through self-mployment. Furthermore, youth in both groups were more likely to start enterprises and more successful in ensuring their businesses' survival. The program led to significantly larger profits (24.2% and 27.2% for hard- and soft- treatment arms respectively) and larger business capital investments (38.4% and 32.6% for SEED hard and SEED soft, respectively). Both SEED curricula were very cost-effective; two months worth of the extra earnings caused by the training alone would exceed the cost of the program. These benefits abstract from the job- and business-creation benefits of the program, which were substantial: relative to the control group, SEED entrepreneurs created 985 additional jobs and 550 new businesses. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-year Field Experiment in Uganda

We present evidence from a six-year field experiment with young job seekers in urban labor markets in Uganda. We study how standard labor market interventions impact their search behavior, long run labor market outcomes, and how these long run outcomes are mediated through search behavior. The interventions we consider are the offer of vocational training, vocational training combined with job assistance, and job assistance only. Training is offered in sectors with high wage firms. Job assistance comprises a light touch offer to match workers for job interviews with such high wage firms. At baseline, youth are unskilled yet overly optimistic about their job prospects. Relative to controls, those offered vocational training become even more optimistic, search more intensively and direct their search towards higher quality firms. However, for youth additionally offered job assistance, expectations and search effort are revised downwards as call back rates from firms the workers are matched to, are far lower than their prior expectation. These differential search strategies impact long run outcomes: vocational trainees without job assistance have higher employment rates, longer employment spells, and end up in higher quality jobs and firms than workers additionally offered job assistance. Our analysis highlights how the potential for labor market entrants to be exuberant or discouraged both matter for long run outcomes through job search behavior. We discuss implications for the design and targeting of labor market interventions meant to help young people find good jobs.

Foreign aid, oil revenues, and political accountability: Evidence from six experiments in Ghana and Uganda

Foreign aid may act much like oil money in reducing voters’ willingness to demand accountability from their government, enabling corruption, clientelism, and repression. This is an important causal mechanism connecting public budgets to quality of governance. Yet other scholarship counters that aid is more beneficial than oil, either indirectly because of donor oversight or directly because aid is more likely to produce citizen pressures on governments. Empirical work on the topic employs observational data at the national, macro level, and has left the question unresolved. At the micro level, in some countries citizens have experience with aid revenues and oil funds, thus possessing information about the political implications of these different revenue sources. This article provides the first experimental tests of the direct mechanism linking aid and oil revenues to demands from citizens for greater political accountability. We report the effects of randomly assigned treatments identifying aid funds compared to oil money on behavior of citizens in six survey and lab experiments in Ghana and Uganda. We find no differences in accountability pressures when subjects are randomly assigned to aid or oil conditions in any experiment, including a survey-based field experiment in Uganda that employed very strong information treatments on the extent of aid and oil funds. Though little evidence suggests that either windfall necessarily reduces accountability demands from baseline in a meaningful way, citizens’ actions for aid money were statistically indistinguishable from oil revenues across all experiments. Aid may well have governance effects through the indirect route of donor oversight, but the results presented here suggest no evidence that aid, compared to oil, directly induces greater accountability demands among citizens.

How Do Different Forms of Foreign Aid Affect Government Legitimacy? Evidence from an Informational Experiment in Uganda

Local public goods and social services are delivered through a variety of funding and implementing channels in aid-dependent countries. Existing research proposes that international aid to governments undermines government legitimacy and the fiscal contract between citizens and their rulers. We outline how the implications of fiscal contract theory differ depending on whether aid takes the form of donors funding projects through the government, donors funding projects through NGOs, or the government outsourcing project implementation to NGOs. We test these predictions using an informational experiment among N = 2446 Ugandan adults in 18 communities with foreign-funded, NGO-implemented projects. We randomize the amount of information that we provide about these projects. Our results suggest that donor-to-government funding has limited effects on citizens’ opinions about their government. Only bypass aid (i.e., donor aid to NGOs) undermines citizens’ assessments of government performance, while only NGO implementation reduces the willingness of citizens to pay fees to the government or to donate to community funds. Government legitimacy, as measured by individuals’ willingness to comply with government instructions, is very low to begin with and is not influenced by information about different forms of aid.

A Placebo Design to Detect Spillovers from an Education–Entertainment Experiment in Uganda

SummaryEducation–entertainment refers to dramatizations designed to convey information and to change attitudes. Buoyed by observational studies suggesting that education–entertainment strongly influences beliefs, attitudes and behaviours, scholars have recently assessed education–entertainment by using rigorous experimental designs in field settings. Studies conducted in developing countries have repeatedly shown the effectiveness of radio and film dramatizations on outcomes ranging from health to group conflict. One important gap in the literature is estimation of social spillover effects from those exposed to the dramatizations to others in the audience members’ social network. In theory, the social diffusion of media effects could greatly amplify their policy impact. The current study uses a novel placebo-controlled design that gauges both the direct effects of the treatment on audience members as well as the indirect effects of the treatment on others in their family and in the community. We implement this design in two large cluster-randomized experiments set in rural Uganda using video dramatizations on the topics of violence against women, teacher absenteeism and abortion stigma. We find several instances of sizable and highly significant direct effects on the attitudes of audience members, but we find little evidence that these effects diffused to others in the villages where the videos were aired.

Networks, incentives and technology adoption: evidence from a randomised experiment in Uganda

Abstract We use data from a randomised experiment in Uganda to examine effects of incentives on the decision to adopt drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) and mechanisms through which effects occur. We find that social recognition (SR) incentives to a random subset of trained farmers – disseminating farmers (DFs) – increase knowledge transmission from DFs to their co-villagers and change information networks of both DFs and their neighbours. SR also increases DFs’ likelihood of adopting DTMVs. However, the corresponding results for private material rewards are not conclusively strong. We find no evidence that incentives for knowledge diffusion increase the likelihood of co-villagers adopting DTMVs.