Gender-sensitive experiments to encourage participation and performance in a Business Plan Competition in Mozambique

Last registered on April 26, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Gender-sensitive experiments to encourage participation and performance in a Business Plan Competition in Mozambique
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011264
Initial registration date
April 20, 2023

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
April 26, 2023, 5:03 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region
Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
DIME, World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
World Bank
PI Affiliation
World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-01-14
End date
2024-06-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Entrepreneurship is a promising opportunity for women in Mozambique, but female entrepreneurs in the country continue to face many constraints and are concentrated in small-scale, low-growth, informal businesses in services sectors – similar to many other low- or middle-income countries. A World Bank funded project – Harnessing the Demographic Dividend (HDD, P166100) – is launching a nation-wide Business Plan Competition in Mozambique with the explicit aim of attracting and supporting female-owned high-growth businesses. The winners of the BPC in Mozambique will receive grants, training and mentoring, and access to an internship program. The project specifies that 50 % of all BPC winners must be female, thereby instituting a gender quota. Previous experiences in several African have shown that women are underrepresented among the applicants and winners of BPCs, even though their returns from winning these competitions are at least as large as men’s.

Given this difficulty of attracting female applicants to BPCs, the research team, in collaboration with the HDD project team, will conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test different interventions that aim to increase the participants’ likelihood of applying to the BPC and the performance of their businesses within and outside the BPC. Tested against 0) no intervention and 1) a factual control intervention, three different interventions will be employed which aim to mitigate different possible constraints to successful participation in the BPC: 2) a quota intervention that makes the gender quota in the BPC salient and aims to alleviate the constraint that women are less likely to enter competitions against men, and are less competitive when facing male competitors; 3) an inspirational intervention presenting same-gendered role models that aims to boost participant’s aspirations and confidence to enter the competition; and 4) application assistance that aims to reduce the costs of applying and address practical constraints to participation.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Campos, Francisco, Joao Montalvao and Hannah Uckat. 2023. "Gender-sensitive experiments to encourage participation and performance in a Business Plan Competition in Mozambique." AEA RCT Registry. April 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11264-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The research team, in collaboration with the HDD project team, will conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test different interventions that aim to increase the likelihood of participants applying to the BPC and the performance of their businesses. Tested against a control intervention, three different interventions will be employed which aim to mitigate different possible constraints to successful participation in the BPC. The interventions will individually be delivered to 6,000 female and male new or existing entrepreneurs, either through tailored videos or scripted in-person intervention. A summary of the interventions is provided here:
0. No intervention (pure control)
1. A core video with factual information about the BPC as a control intervention.
2. A quota video (combined with the core video), which makes salient that the gender quota in the BPC implies that women will only compete against women, and men against men. Laboratory experiments have shown that women are less likely to enter competitions against men (rather than against only women), and are less competitive when facing male competitors. The quota video aims to alleviate this constraint.
3. An inspirational video (combined with the core video), which shows a same-gendered, relatable role model entrepreneur. This video aims to boost participant’s aspirations and confidence to enter the competition, addressing the constraint that women often have lower self-confidence than men and that they may lack same-gendered business role models.
4. Application assistance (combined with the core video), which offers assistance and explanations about filling out and submitting the application form for the BPC. This intervention aims to address practical constraints to participation, e.g. unfamiliarity with filling out forms or language to describe business ideas.
Intervention (Hidden)
The treatment interventions target three potential constraints: 1) Women’s lower willingness to enter competitions, especially against men, 2) lack of confidence and business aspirations, and 3) practical constraints to participation such as unfamiliarity with business language or the filling out of forms. The intervention design utilizes recent evidence on entrepreneurship and willingness to compete, and addresses gender-specific constraints.

0. No intervention: One part of the sample received no intervention, and these respondents only participated in the entry and exit surveys that were conducted during the project delivery. They did not receive any information about the Business Plan Competition, and therefore function as a pure control group.

1. Core video: The core video is a 4-minute video delivering core factual information about the BPC. The content in the video is presented by one female and one male protagonist. The video explains that the goal of the BPC is to pick the most innovative business ideas, with the greatest potential to generate jobs for the youth emphasizing the competitive nature of the contest, providing details about the application and the transparent scoring system that will rank participants. An explanation of prizes to be won, training type and content is included in the core video. The video emphasizes the technical support and training, as well as the possibility to meet peers that will be offered to participants who pass the pre-screening.
Importantly, the core video does not mention the gender quota in the BPC. It also does not provide any inspirational content or explicit assistance on how to fill out the application form.

2. Quota video: The quota video is a 2-minute video segment that was combined with the 4-minute core video for delivery. The research team decided to show the core video to all treatment groups since we believe that the basic information about the BPC and the application process in the core video is necessary to encourage participation. The quota video makes salient the gender quota in the BPC by explaining that (1) half of all pre-selected applicants and winners must be women, and (2) that the BPC is a gender specific competition, that is, women will compete only against women and men will compete only against men. The video will thus emphasize that participants’ business ideas and plans will be competing against those developed by other participants of the same gender only, rather than those developed by anyone (i.e. male or female). The content in the video will be presented by one female and one male protagonist.
This intervention targets the potential constraint that women have a lower willingness to enter competitions, especially against men. The gender quota embedded in the design of the BPC implies that competition is within-gender. Highlighting this aspect may be particularly relevant, as recent research on this subject suggest that women do not avoid competition, they avoid competing against men. By definition, a BPC is a competition, and research shows that high-performing women fail to enter competitions they can win, due to gender differences in self-confidence and in preferences for performing in a competition (Niederle and Vesterlund 2007, 2011).
How to address this difficulty? Recent research suggests that women who know they are competing only against other women display more competitive behaviors than when knowing they are competing against men – they exhibit higher performance, higher confidence, and greater preference for performing in a competition (Burow et al. 2017; Datta Gupta et al. 2013, Paryavi et al. 2022). The findings suggest that women do not necessarily avoid competition; they instead avoid competing against men. Hence, highlighting the fact that there is a gender quota in the BPC may help overcome this barrier. Making the gender quota salient could thus increase women’s willingness to enter the BPC, increase their application probability, and improve the performance of the women who select into the BPC. The balance of evidence from laboratory experiments suggests that such affirmative action initiatives succeed at fostering competitive behavior among women (Balafoutas and Sutter, 2012; Niederle et al. 2013). The aim of this intervention was to test this hypothesis outside the lab, in the real world, in the context of the HDD BPC.
For male participants, compared to the control intervention, making the gender quota salient could possibly lead men to revise downward their expected probability of winning the BPC due to more intense competition among men with a quota, which could reduce men’s likelihood of applying. Note, however, that the men who are discouraged may be lower-performing than the additional women who enter thanks to the quota treatment.

3. Aspirational videos: Two versions of aspirational videos were produced, one with a female and one with a male role model. Both videos are 2.5-minute video segments with inspirational content aimed at boosting self-confidence and aspirations that will be combined with the 5-minute core video for delivery. Respondents received the video with the protagonist of their own gender. The video exposes participants to an entrepreneurial role model (a female for women, a male for men) to whom they can relate, who grew their businesses and created jobs for the youth through their own initiative, persistence, hard work, and innovation. The video presents entrepreneurial traits that are critical for success in the BPC. The video displays a same-gender role model who is close enough to the reality of the potential applicants to make them feel inspired but not hopeless as too far from their reach. The role model also shares some of the challenges encountered, which should be familiar and resonate with the audience, and ways the role model has overcome those. Last, the role model is culturally as close as possible to the target audience.
The two inspirational videos with a female role model and male role model are as comparable as possible: The script is the same, and the business sectors, filming locations and role model presentation are as similar as possible.
The inspirational video targets the potential constraint that women may lack confidence and business aspirations. The inspirational video focuses on encouraging respondents to believe in their ability to set ambitious business goals and to aspire to win, for both male and female participants. Showing a same-gendered role model may help especially women to break through stereotypical gender norms such as communal, caring and daring behavior. In line with the theory of positive psychology and with social role theory , women entrepreneurs are less likely to identify with the agentic entrepreneurial role, which is traditionally associated with men, and less likely to display confidence and willingness to risk. This leads to structural disadvantages for women entrepreneurs preventing female-owned business to succeed.
Inspiring entrepreneurs through role models may help not only with attracting more applicants into the BPC, but also to improve the quality of their business plans, chances of winning, and ability to effectively use the new knowledge acquired during the training (and potentially the grant) towards business expansion and job creation. This intervention is motivated by recent research showing the power of shaping people’s beliefs, hopes, confidence, and aspirations through role models and peers and through the use of positive psychology (Macours & Vakis, 2014; Beaman et al. 2012). For example, Bernard et al. (2015) designed an RCT to test efficiency of video-based interventions in rural Ethiopia. They tested documentaries of 15 minutes each of people with very similar backgrounds to the audience, that have improved their socio-economic status successfully, considered today as role models. Results have shown that documentaries do have an impact on the audience's aspirations.

4. Application assistance: For the application assistance intervention, the respondents first watched the core video and were then offered assistance for filling out the BPC application form. If the respondent accepted the offer, the enumerator helped the respondent sign up on the Agora Emprega application website, and then proceeded to fill out the short application form with the respondent. The enumerator also responded to any questions the respondent had about filling out the application.
The application assistance intervention addresses potential practical constraints to participation such as unfamiliarity with business language or the filling out of forms. The team hypothesized that this assistance reduces the mental and time costs of applying to the BPC, and hence increases the application probability. The mental and time costs of applying may be higher for female than for male respondents if female respondents are less used to filling out forms, and if they are less familiar with business language.

Intervention Start Date
2023-01-14
Intervention End Date
2023-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our main outcomes of interest and their data sources are:
• Growth aspirations for the business (exit survey, follow-up survey)
• Attitudes towards gender and competition (exit survey, follow-up survey)
• Intention to apply to the BPC (exit survey)
• Indicator whether respondent applied to BPC (administrative data)
• Business plan quality during pre-screening (administrative data)
• If we see large impacts on the outcomes before and during the BPC, we will also collect measures of business performance: business survival, number of employees and turnover (pre-survey, follow-up survey)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We will also track respondents’ performance in further stages of the BPC (whether respondents passed the pre-screening, whether they won the BPC, and the associated scores) but anticipate that we will not be powered for these outcomes and due to selection effects.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
With equal probability, we will assign in a random fashion 3.000 female and 3.000 male entrepreneurs to one of five treatment arms: (T0) Pure control, (T1) Core Video, (T2) Core + Quota video, (T3) Core + Inspirational Video and (T4) Core Video + Application Assistance. For each treatment arm and gender, we are expecting 600 individuals.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
The randomization is implemented in the field using a pre-prepared code in the CAPI software.
Randomization Unit
The random assignment will take place at the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A
Sample size: planned number of observations
6000 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1200 individuals in teach of the 5 treatment arms (600 female, 600 male)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
HML IRB
IRB Approval Date
2022-12-19
IRB Approval Number
2164

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials