Field Experiment In India Research Articles

Self Confidence Spillovers and Motivated Beliefs

Is success in a task used strategically by individuals to motivate their beliefs prior to taking action in a subsequent, unrelated, task? Also, is the distortion of beliefs reinforced for individuals who have lower status in society? Conducting an artefactual field experiment in India, we show that success when competing in a task increases the performers' self-confidence and competitiveness in the subsequent task. We also find that such spillovers affect the self-confidence of low-status individuals more than that of high-status individuals. Receiving good news under Affirmative Action, however, boosts confidence across tasks regardless of the caste status.

Can incentives improve survey data quality in developing countries?: results from a field experiment in India.

We report results of an experiment designed to assess whether the payment of contingent incentives to respondents in Karnataka, India, impacts the quality of survey data. Of 2276 households sampled at the city block level, 934 were randomly assigned to receive a small one-time payment at the time of the survey, whereas the remaining households did not receive this incentive. We analyse the effects of incentives across a range of questions that are common in survey research in less developed countries. Our study suggests that incentives reduced unit non-response. Conditionally on participation, we also find little impact of incentives on a broad range of sociodemographic, behavioural and attitudinal questions. In contrast, we consistently find that households that received incentives reported substantially lower consumption and income levels and fewer assets. Given random assignment and very high response rates, the most plausible interpretation of this finding is that incentivizing respondents in this setting may increase their motivation to present themselves as more needy, whether to justify the current payment or to increase the chance of receiving resources in the future. Therefore, despite early indications that contingent incentives may raise response rates, the net effect on data quality must be carefully considered.

The Impact of Maternal Literacy and Participation Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India

Using a randomized field experiment in India, we evaluate the effectiveness of adult literacy and parental involvement interventions in improving children's learning. Households were assigned to receive either adult literacy (language and math) classes for mothers, training for mothers on how to enhance their children's learning at home, or a combination of the two programs. All three interventions had significant but modest impacts on childrens math scores. The interventions also increased mothers' test scores in both language and math, as well as a range of other outcomes reflecting greater involvement of mothers in their children's education. (JEL I21, J13, J16, O15)

Information strategies for energy conservation: A field experiment in India

Little is known about the effectiveness of information strategies on energy conservation in developing countries. In this study, we conduct a field experiment in an apartment complex in India to test how information about electricity usage impacts the electricity consumption of urban middle class households. Our results, based on fifteen-minute electricity readings over an academic year, show that non-monetary messages that framed electricity consumption in terms of environmental and health impacts were more effective than messages emphasizing the monetary savings of reducing electricity consumption. Households in the environmental/health group accessed the online energy-monitoring dashboard more frequently and reduced their electricity usage by 18.4% relative to the control group. Households in the monetary group did not significantly alter their usage. These results about revealed preferences are contrasted with stated preferences disclosed in a survey of urban Indians who describe money, not health, as the main motivation for energy conservation. Our findings have important implications for the development non-monetary strategies for energy conservation in developing countries.

Learning to Manage: A Field Experiment in the Indian Startup Ecosystem

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about people management influences their firm's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms whose founders received in-person advice from other entrepreneurs who varied in their managerial style. We find that entrepreneurs who received advice from peers with an active approach to managing people–instituting regular meetings, setting goals consistently, and providing frequent feedback to employees–grew 28% larger and were 10 percentage points less likely to fail than those who got advice from peers with a passive people-management approach two years after our intervention. Entrepreneurs with MBAs or accelerator experience did not respond to this intervention, suggesting that formal training can limit the spread of peer advice.

Insecticidal effects of deltamethrin in laboratory and field populations of Culicoides species: how effective are host-contact reduction methods in India?

BackgroundBluetongue virus (BTV) is transmitted by Culicoides biting midges and causes bluetongue (BT), a clinical disease observed primarily in sheep. BT has a detrimental effect on subsistence farmers in India, where hyperendemic outbreaks impact on smallholdings in the southern states of the country. In this study, we establish a reliable method for testing the toxic effects of deltamethrin on Culicoides and then compare deltamethrin with traditional control methods used by farmers in India.ResultsEffects of deltamethrin were initially tested using a colonised strain of Culicoides nubeculosus Meigen and a modified World Health Organisation exposure assay. This method was then applied to field populations of Culicoides spp. in India. The field population of C. oxystoma in India had a greater LC50 (0.012 ± 0.009%) for deltamethrin than laboratory-reared C.nubeculosus (0.0013 ± 0.0002%). Exposure of C. nubeculosus to deltamethrin at higher ambient temperatures resulted in greater rates of knockdown but a lower mortality rate at 24 h post-exposure. Behavioural assays with C. nubeculosus in WHO tubes provided evidence for contact irritancy and spatial repellence caused by deltamethrin. The field experiments in India, however, provided no evidence for repellent or toxic effects of deltamethrin. Traditional methods such as the application of neem oil and burning of neem leaves also provided no protection.ConclusionsOur study demonstrates that field-collected Culicoides in India are less susceptible to deltamethrin exposure than laboratory-bred C. nubeculosus and traditional methods of insect control do not provide protection to sheep. These low levels of susceptibility to deltamethrin have not been recorded before in field populations of Culicoides and suggest resistance to synthetic pyrethrioids. Alternative insect control methods, in addition to vaccination, may be needed to protect Indian livestock from BTV transmission.

Religious Fragmentation, Social Identity and Conflict: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment in India.

We examine the impact of religious identity and village-level religious fragmentation on behavior in Tullock contests. We report on a series of two-player Tullock contest experiments conducted on a sample of 516 Hindu and Muslim participants in rural West Bengal, India. Our treatments are the identity of the two players and the degree of religious fragmentation in the village where subjects reside. Our main finding is that the effect of social identity is small and inconsistent across the two religious groups in our study. While we find small but statistically significant results in line with our hypotheses in the Hindu sample, we find no statistically significant effects in the Muslim sample. This is in contrast to evidence from Chakravarty et al. (2016), who report significant differences in cooperation levels in prisoners’ dilemma and stag hunt games, both in terms of village composition and identity. We attribute this to the fact that social identity may have a more powerful effect on cooperation than on conflict.

Assessing the Demand for Micropensions Among India's Poor

Using new data from a field experiment in India, we test hypotheses about micropension design in a poor population. We elicit demand for the basic micropension in addition to variants with different minimum withdrawal ages, government match rates, and options for lump sum withdrawal. A majority (80%) of respondents report interest in the micropension, and the amount they are willing to contribute would be enough to cover about 40% of expected old-age consumption. We find that prospective policyholders value the inability to access the assets until a particular age. We also find that they respond positively to the government match rate.

Assessing the Demand for Micropensions among India's Poor.

Using new data from a field experiment in India, we test hypotheses about micropension design in a poor population. We elicit demand for the basic micropension in addition to variants with different minimum withdrawal ages, government match rates, and options for lump sum withdrawal. A majority (80%) of respondents report interest in the micropension, and the amount they are willing to contribute would be enough to cover about 40% of expected old-age consumption. We find that prospective policyholders value the inability to access the assets until a particular age. We also find that they respond positively to the government match rate.

Remedying Education with Personalized Learning: Evidence from Randomized Field Experiment in India

Can Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled personalization remedy the educational production in resource-strapped schooling systems? We conduct a randomized field experiment on a group of residential schools in Hyderabad India to examine this question. In a school setting, students first learn concepts through class room instructions and then reinforce their learning by doing homework. In our experiment, students were first taught different topics in mathematics through classroom instructions, and then a randomly selected one half of them were assigned computer-generated adaptive homework (CGAHW) and the other half were offered paper-based traditional homework (PBTHW). In a PBTHW, a pre-decided fixed number of easy and hard questions were offered from different topics. In a CGAHW, first half of the total questions were offered in the easy category, and based on a student’s performance on these questions, later questions were adaptively generated such that: (1) more questions were offered on the topics in which student incorrectly answered questions and (2) hard questions on a topic were offered when the student correctly answered easy questions on that topic. Thus, while all PBTHW students received the same number of easy and hard questions on different topics, CGAHW students received different numbers and difficulty levels of questions on different topics based on their individual learning needs. A total of 50 homework in each category were offered to students between October 2014 and April 2015, and their learning was assessed in two standardized exams offered in this period.We found that CGAHW students on average obtained lower homework scores than PBTHW students, but they obtained 4.28 percent higher scores in exams than PBTHW students. Lower homework scores could be attributed to students receiving more questions in their weak areas in CGAHW. However, by doing more questions in their weak areas and less in their strong areas, students achieved personalized learning in CGAHW, and hence obtained higher exam scores. To provide evidence that personalized learning in CGAHW resulted in improvement in their exam scores, we show that students that were offered higher levels of personalization in CGAHW, obtained higher exam scores. To further understand the differential effect of CGAHW on students of different abilities, we categorized students in low, medium, and high categories of ability based on their mathematics scores in standardized exams at the beginning of experiment. We found that personalized learning through CGAHW helped the students in low and medium ability categories but not in high ability category. Overall, we developed and deployed an adaptive homework generation application in a field set up to show how ICT-enabled personalized learning could improve educational production with existing school resources.

Quality Health Care and Willingness to Pay for Health Insurance Retention: A Randomized Experiment in Kolkata Slums.

The low quality of health care in developing countries reduces the poor's incentives to use quality health services and their demand for health insurance. Using data from a field experiment in India, I show that randomly offering insurance policyholders a free preventive checkup with a qualified doctor has a twofold effect: receiving this additional benefit raises willingness to pay to renew health insurance by 53%, doubling the likelihood of hypothetical renewal; exposed individuals are 10 percentage points more likely to consult a qualified practitioner when ill after the checkup. Both effects are concentrated on poorer households. There is no effect on health knowledge and healthcare spending. This suggests that exposing insured households to quality preventive care can be a cost-effective way of raising the demand for quality health care and retaining policyholders in the insurance scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Religious fragmentation, social identity and cooperation: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment in India

We study the role of village-level religious fragmentation on intra- and inter-group cooperation in India. We report on data on two-player prisoners׳ dilemma and stag hunt experiments played by 516 Hindu and Muslim participants in rural India. Our treatments are the identity of the two players and the degree of village-level religious heterogeneity. In religiously heterogeneous villages, cooperation rates in the prisoners׳ dilemma, and to a lesser extent the stag hunt game, are higher when subjects of either religion play with a fellow in-group member than when they play with an out-group member or with someone whose identity is unknown. Interestingly, cooperation rates among people of the same religion are significantly lower in homogeneous villages than in fragmented villages in both games.

Barriers to Skill Acquisition: Evidence from English Training in India

Skill development is increasingly viewed as a way to escape the low education – high unemployment trap in developing countries. Consequently, policy makers in these countries are extensively investing in skill development programs. However, participation and completion rates in many of these programs remains low. This paper investigates factors that prevent individuals from acquiring spoken English, an important skill with potentially high returns in the labor market. Using data from a field experiment in India that subsidizes the cost of learning spoken English, we find that full subsidy (compared to partial or no subsidy) positively effects the probability of participating in a spoken English training program. Conversely, distance to the training center, pre-existing knowledge of spoken English, and past enrollment in a similar course act as significant barriers to take-up. These findings suggest that multidimensional policy solutions are required to overcome the barriers to skill development in developing countries.

Do Non-Monetary Prices Target the Poor? Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

This paper uses willingness to pay (WTP) data from a field experiment in Hyderabad, India in 2013 to determine whether non-monetary prices better target health products to the poor than monetary prices. Monetary WTP is increasing in income and non-monetary WTP is weakly decreasing in income. Household fixed effects in a pooled sample of monetary WTP and non-monetary WTP are used to compare the correlation of income and WTP across price types. It is found that non-monetary WTP falls relative to monetary WTP as income rises. Finally, a greater fraction of demand is comprised of the poor at non-monetary prices.

The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases

This paper uses a large-scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that can stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (i) financial incentives on a financial literacy test to affect participant motivation, (ii) financial goal setting to provide a psychological nudge, and (iii) personalized financial counseling to enhance the intensity of treatment. The analysis finds no impact of financial incentives on learning but significant effects of both goal setting and counseling on real financial outcomes. These results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and behavior change. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2819 . This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.

Moving up the Energy Ladder: The Effect of an Increase in Economic Well-Being on the Fuel Consumption Choices of the Poor in India

Rising household wealth may potentially impact both total fuel consumption and fuel-type composition, resulting in significant health and environmental implications. Using data from a field experiment in India, we explore the effects of a transfer program that provided poor, rural households with greater levels of assets and cash. Total fuel consumption rose as a result of the transfers. Households shifted from using electricity rather than kerosene as their primary form of light, but total kerosene consumption also rose. In contrast, we did not observe a shift to cleaner cooking fuels.

Quality Healthcare and Health Insurance Retention: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in the Kolkata Slums

Healthcare in developing countries is often unreliable and of poor quality, thus reducing individuals incentives to use quality health services. This paper examines an innovative approach to access to and demand for quality health care from the poor. Using data from a field experiment in India, I examine the impact of high-quality care experiences in the form of a free medical consultation with a qualified nongovernmental organization doctor, randomly offered by a health insurance provider to a subset of its enrollees. The effects are twofold. First, receiving this additional benefit raises enrollees’ willingness to pay to renew health insurance by 51 percent. This impact appears mostly at the extensive margin and is driven by a perceived income shock, as well as increased satisfaction with the scheme and trust in the insurance provider. In addition, exposed individuals are 12 percentage points more likely to consult a qualified practitioner when ill two months after the free consultation. Providing some initial quality care thus improves the demand for quality healthcare through two different pathways — first by improving health insurance retention and second by raising the subsequent use of quality health services.

Ethnic dominance damages cooperation more than ethnic diversity: results from multi-ethnic field experiments in India

Research in many societies shows that ethnic diversity correlates with a decline in cooperation at the community level. This literature neglects cases in which ethnic heterogeneity is hierarchically structured. Power and status differences between ethnic groups, or ethnic dominance, may play an important role in determining cooperative outcomes. We test this hypothesis using public goods experiments with caste groups in India in which we manipulate the caste composition of experimental groups. Conservative estimates show that ethnic dominance between high and low ranking castes has a much larger negative effect on contributions in the public goods experiment than does caste diversity. We argue that ethnic dominance interactions such as ethnic discrimination constitute a type of antisocial punishment between groups. We also find that conditional cooperation is limited to within ethnic groups, revealing ethnocentric cooperation preferences. These results confirm the importance of group structure in human cooperative patterns, and help bridge the gap between evolutionary theory and cooperation dynamics in multi-ethnic real world settings.

Contributions for a Community Good: Results from a Field Experiment in India

This paper presents the results of a field experiment on voluntary contribution for a proposed community good. The experiment was conducted at village Sundarika, District South 24 parganas, in West Bengal, India. The proposed community good was a community medicinal plant garden. Solicitation letters, on behalf of a local Community Based Organization (CBO), were delivered to one hundred households by the experimenters with the request to contribute generously for the proposed garden. Sixty-five households contributed and a strong positive association is found between contributions and CBO membership on the one hand and landholding on the other.

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