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Senegal Behavior Change Campaign & Solar Lights Evaluation

Last registered on December 11, 2017

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Senegal Behavior Change Campaign & Solar Lights Evaluation
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000977
Initial registration date
December 09, 2015

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 09, 2015, 9:41 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
December 11, 2017, 5:18 PM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Leibniz University Hannover/ The World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
The world Bank
PI Affiliation
The World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2016-02-01
End date
2017-11-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is home to over 600 million people without access to electricity. Small-scale solar photovoltaic (pico-PV) products have emerged as a way to provide access to basic energy services, particularly modern lighting, and are assumed to be associated with development benefits such as household savings, increased productivity, better education, and reduced indoor air pollution. In Senegal, Lighting Africa in combination with Total, will implement a behavior change campaign relying mainly on radio clip broadcasting as well as community outreach print materials.
The proposed impact evaluation will assess two elements of the mass media campaign, comparing narrative clips broadcasted at a national radio station with the same radio intervention in combination with community outreach materials regarding per capita costs and effects on awareness, understanding, and demand of solar lights. It is based on an innovative experimental design that achieves village-level randomization without needing to control radio airwaves. Moreover, this is the first experimental mass media study related to energy and climate-change. If the mass media campaigns (the primary focus of this impact evaluation) increase purchases, the evaluation team will aim to measure the behavior change and development impacts of these products.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Coville, Aidan, Victor Orozco and Arndt Reichert. 2017. "Senegal Behavior Change Campaign & Solar Lights Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. December 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.977-3.0
Former Citation
Coville, Aidan, Victor Orozco and Arndt Reichert. 2017. "Senegal Behavior Change Campaign & Solar Lights Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. December 11. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/977/history/23894
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This IE will examine two mass media campaigns in three Sengalese regions (Thiès, Diourbel, and Louga) that aim to make people switch from climate-damaging energy sources to small-scale solar lanterns. These lanterns provide bright white light at a wide angle, illuminating an entire room. They can feature different brightness settings, providing up to 16 hours of light (100 hours on the bed light setting). They can charge mobile phones and come with a USB port allowing smart phones to be charged.


Intervention Start Date
2016-04-01
Intervention End Date
2016-05-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Investment, Demand, Awareness, Understanding, Productive time use, ALRI, Fuel replacement
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The study will follow a cluster randomized controlled trial with 2 treatment arms (T1 and T2) compared to a control (C).

Treatment 1: Radio
We will follow the approach taken by Berg and Zia (2013) in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the radio spots. Households within each of the 150 participating villages will be encouraged to tune into one of two similar radio stations (for example, channels X and Y ). T1 and T2 villages will be encouraged to listen to channel X which will be broadcasting the radio campaign while C villages will be encouraged to listen to channel Y which will not broadcast any LA material. Each household will receive a lottery ticket if they participate in the baseline interview coupled with the information that (i) there will be two daily radio lotteries during one popular morning and evening show, such as the hit parade, at a random time of the show for one month, (ii) their cell-phone number will be what the radio station uses to verify the authenticity of their lottery ticket, (iii) they may receive a cash award of US$50 if their lottery number is called, and (iv) awarded individuals need to activate mobile-phone based payment of the reward by texting to a specific number at no cost. During these lotteries, a radio host will randomly draw one lottery number out of a list of recruited participants

Treatment 2: Community campaign
Villages randomly selected to be part of T2 will have community outreach materials distributed in addition to the radio campaign.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Villages and households
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
50 clusters per treatment arms
Sample size: planned number of observations
20-100 housholds per village
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
3000-15000 households in a total of 15o villages
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Solutions
IRB Approval Date
2016-03-04
IRB Approval Number
Protocol #2016/03/4

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
May 31, 2016, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
June 30, 2016, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
No
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials