Technology recommendations and social concerns: Evidence from savings technologies in Pakistan

In the experiment, we will measure rural Pakistanis willingness-to-recommend a familiar savings technology, a lockbox, and an unfamiliar technology, a digital savings account. Our interventions attempt to de-risk recommendations. The first intervention makes the recommendation anonymous. In the second intervention, the recommender is made aware that their partner will receive consumer financial protection training prior to using the technology.

This experiment also includes a village-level intervention. In two thirds of the villages, we will seed socially-central individuals with information about digital savings accounts. In half of these "seeding" villages, we will also include consumer financial protection information and offer an anonymous communication channel for discussion of digital savings accounts.

2023-02-15

2023-04-15

Individual-level: willingness-to-recommend digital savings account to co-villager; willingness-to-recommend lockbox to co-villager
Village-level: experiences with digital savings accounts; knowledge of digital savings accounts;

Willingness-to-recommend is measured through a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism.
Experiences with digital savings accounts and knowledge of digital savings accounts will be indices constructed from endline survey responses following the Anderson (2008) method.

Individual-level: use of digital savings account, Uptake of digital savings account/lockbox by co-villager
Village-level: communication about digital savings accounts, amount saved, opinions about digital savings, advanced use of digital banking, resilience to shocks.

Use of digital savings account will be measured via the endline survey.

Uptake of digital savings account/lockbox by co-villager is a dummy variable equaling 1 if the co-villager accepts our offer and 0 otherwise.
Communication about digital savings accounts is an index of endline responses relating to communication about digital savings accounts.
Amount saved is the total amount saved measured in PKR at endline.

Opinions about digital savings is an index of how positive the respondent views digital savings at endline.

Advanced use of digital banking is an index of how much the respondent uses digital banking products such as insurance, loans etc. at endline.

Resilience to shocks is measured by questions on how the respondent would deal with a negative shock at endline.

I propose to run this field experiment in 150 villages in Pakistan. Villages will be randomized into one of five experimental groups stratifying by subdistrict, digital banking knowledge, social proximity of respondents to seeds, and population size: Control, Seeding, Seeding + Anonymous-Consumer Financial Protection (CFP). In the baseline survey, we will randomize respondents into one of four groups: Control, Consumer Financial Protection (CFP) Info, Anonymous recommendation, and CFP Info + Anon. recommendation. After eight weeks, the field team will conduct phone surveys with the baseline respondents.

Not available

randomization done in office by a computer

Household-level for information treatments; village-level for seeding treatments

Yes

150 villages; 2100 households

2100 adult household members

50 villages per village-level treatment arm; 525 adults per individual-level treatment arm

For the individual-level, we will have a MDE of .17 SDs between subgroups with .80 power at a .05 significance level for our main outcomes. At the village-level, we will have a MDE of .30-.35 SDs between subgroups with .80 power at a .05 significance level assuming an ICC between .03-.20 for our main outcome.