Scaling Political Information Campaigns

Many successful pilot projects in international aid fail to scale up to serve the broader population of the host country. We study barriers to scaling from multiple angles in the context of a political information campaign in Sierra Leone.

As background, results from a 2012 pilot implemented by Search for Common Ground (SFCG) suggest that hosting debates between Parliamentary (MP) candidates from rival political parties and disseminating them via large public film screenings was highly effective in educating voters, informing their vote choices, and increasing accountability pressure on elected MPs (Bidwell, Casey and Glennerster 2016). On the strength of these results, SFCG raised funds to scale their debates pilot to cover nearly half of all Parliamentary constituencies nationwide in 2018. The first component of this research explores whether the original model can be stretched to reach more voters at lower cost; voter willingness to incur travel costs to access information; and whether debate dissemination can be brought into the business model of private cinema halls.

While debates have become quite common in elections around the world, it is not always easy to convince candidates to participate in them. Frontrunners, for instance, often refuse the invitation from rival party candidates or news organizations to participate in debates, presumably as the downside risk of a bad performance outweighs any potential benefits. On the other hand, if one viable candidate agrees to participate, and a media outlet commits to broadcasting it, the incentives tip toward broader participation as reluctant candidates fear losing out on the free campaign publicity. The second component of this research tests a simple model of a candidate's decision to participate in an initiative that informs voters and sees how it changes with the introduction of a guaranteed broadcast platform.

2018-02-02

2018-04-30

Component 1: voter knowledge, candidate campaign expenditure, willingness to incur costly action to enhance accountability, and (later) MP performance in office

Component 2: candidate interest in participating in debates, ability to coordinate across party, occurrence of debates

Component 1: Random assignment of SFCG video debates across 45 of 90 constituencies. Within constituencies, data collection will occur in the constituency headquarters, and three VRCs randomly selected from the 25th to 75th percentile of size distribution. In treated constituencies, the primary public screening will be held in constituency headquarters, and then the three randomly selected VRCs will host a secondary screening, mobilization only and control, respectively.

Component 2: On demand experiment. All candidates in 72 constituencies delivered information nudge. Then, randomization assigns 15 to video treatment, 15 to pure control, 21 to guaranteed radio platform, and 21 to radio information control. Second information nudge delivered tailored to assignment.

All randomizations are done in the office on a computer.

The unit of randomization is the Parliamentary constituency.

Yes

Component 1: 45 treated and 45 control constituencies
Component 2: 15 video debates (overlaps with T above), 15 pure controls (overlaps with C above), 21 radio airtime, 21 radio information control

Pooling both components: 132 constituencies in total, with at least 264 candidates (exact number of candidates per constituency TBD from NEC official registration), 1,800 voters

Component 1: at least 2 candidates (total candidates TBD based on NEC official registration) and 20 voters per constituency, generating at least 90 candidates and 900 voters in control and at least 90 candidates and 900 voters in debate treatment

Component 2: at least 2 candidates per constituency, so at least 144 in overall demand estimation, and then at least 30 in video treatment and 30 in pure control (overlaps with component 1), plus at least 42 in radio platform treatment and 42 in radio information control