Technology diffusion and social concerns: Evidence from mobile banking in Pakistan

Last registered on May 24, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Technology diffusion and social concerns: Evidence from mobile banking in Pakistan
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011455
Initial registration date
May 22, 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
May 24, 2023, 4:53 PM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Mark Walsh
Affiliation
Stanford University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-04-04
End date
2024-06-01
Keywords
Behavior, Finance & Microfinance, Other
Additional Keywords
social networks; technology adoption; communication; recommendation; social concerns; mobile money; household finance; digital finance; diffusion
JEL code(s)
O101, O116, O117, O114
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Do social concerns affect whether people pass on information? I run a RCT in rural Punjab to explore the willingness to pass on information about a new technology, mobile banking. The experiment offers people a chance to pass information on two types of information (consumer financial protection and advanced usages) to socially close community members and randomly-chosen community members. I randomize the amount of information revealed about a recommendation and then study information-passing choices. At the village-level, I randomize an SMS campaign with information on consumer financial protection and advanced usages. The results of the experiment will inform a model of information diffusion where potential information-sharers consider the effect of sharing on their relationship with social ties.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Walsh, Mark. 2023. "Technology diffusion and social concerns: Evidence from mobile banking in Pakistan." AEA RCT Registry. May 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11455-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
At the individual-level, we will vary the information revealed about recommendations to a socially-close co-villager and randomly-chosen co-villager. At the village-level, we will vary whether up to five villagers receive weekly SMS messages about mobile banking for eight weeks.
Intervention Start Date
2022-04-04
Intervention End Date
2023-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Recommendation of Advanced Usage pamphlet; Recommendation of Consumer Financial Protection pamphlet; Recommendation of both pamphlets; Did not recommend a pamphlet
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Recommendation of Advanced Usage pamphlet: 1 if Sender recommends AU pamphlet or both pamphlets, 0 otherwise
Recommendation of Consumer Financial Protection pamphlet: 1 if Sender recommends CFP pamphlet or both pamphlets, 0 otherwise

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Constrained recommendation of AU pamphlet; Constrained recommendation of CFP pamphlet;Mobile banking knowledge endline index; Expected recommendation effect index; Expected receiver adoption;
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Constrained recommendation of AU pamphlet: Recommends AU pamphlet if can only recommend one pamphlet
Constrained recommendation of CFP pamphlet: Recommends CFP pamphlet if can only recommend one pamphlet

Mobile banking knowledge index: Construct index of mobile banking at endline using method of Anderson (2008).
Expected recommendation effect index: Index of questions related to Sender's expectation that receiver loses/gains money/is happy if makes recommendation constructed using method of Anderson (2008)
Expected receiver adoption: Sender's expectation that receiver adopts mobile banking if makes recommendation

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
I will this field experiment in 56 villages in Pakistan. Villages will be randomized into Control or SMS campaign. In the baseline survey, we will randomize respondents into one of four groups: Control, Receiver Anonymity, Sender Anonymity and Both Anonymity. After eight weeks, the field team will conduct phone surveys with a subset of the baseline respondents.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual; village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
56 villages; 1008 senders
Sample size: planned number of observations
2016 sender-receiver pairs
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
28 villages per village-level treatment arm; 252 senders per individual-level treatment arm
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The MDE for the main sender-receiver pair-level outcomes is 4.83 percentage points higher likelihood of recommending a pamphlet assuming an intra-cluster correlation of .20 and standard deviation of .25. The MDE for the main village-level outcomes is .370 SDs of the mobile banking knowledge index assuming an intra-cluster correlation of .20.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Stanford University
IRB Approval Date
2022-11-14
IRB Approval Number
65703
Analysis Plan