Post-Marital Settlements and Support Systems in Rural Malawi

2024-08-01

2024-09-30

The primary outcomes are (a) the amount of MKW transferred from the associate to the decision-maker and (b) the risk rank of the lottery played by the decision-maker or the proportion of high-risk ranked lotteries over several questions

There are several secondary outcomes to understand the complete causal chain of how social support might determine risk-taking behavior. These outcomes are empirical expectations of support from friends, villagers, and family both in the game and outside the game (elicited through vignette stories), risk-taking behavior outside the game (elicited through vignette stories or direct questions), expectations about what associates will take into account before their sharing decision-making.

We will begin by selecting 6 participants to serve as decision-makers. These decision-makers will then identify their 3 most significant community members for support and their 3 most important kin members. From each list, we will invite the 3rd most relevant individuals to act as “associates.” In each round, decision-makers will be randomly paired
with associates. The decision-makers will choose how much risk to take by selecting one lottery from a
list of two, each with different risk and profit combinations. Meanwhile, the associates will decide
whether and how much to insure. Decision-makers will be informed that associates will have an
endowment of around 1.7$ but the amount shared with the decision-maker will remain private.

Participants will play 2 main games in which different levels of information about the “Decision-Maker”
behavior will be revealed. These 2 games correspond to the main treatment conditions.
The details of each game are as follows:
* No signal round: Without any more information besides the identity of their partner, we ask the associate to choose how much MKW they are willing to give to the "DM” in case she loses the lottery chosen.
• Signal round: In this game, decision-makers choose a lottery to play, aware that their
associates will receive information about the performance of previous players who faced the
same choice between two lotteries. After reviewing the statistics of the losers,
the associates decide how much money to share with the decision-maker in case she loses. Additionally, associates will guess whether the decision-maker is among the people who lost or not.

Decision-makers will play 4 rounds of each of the 2 games, with a different player in each round. To account
for "social distance," decision-makers will play 1 round with a listed associate and the remaining 3
rounds with individuals not on their list. Associates will play 5 rounds, 2 without any information, 2 with information about the loser's statistics, and an additional round with a stranger to serve as a control group.

Information given to associates: The information provided to associates will be based on training
results. We will calculate the number of people who chose the risky option, multiplied by its winning
probability, and those who chose the low-risk option, multiplied by its winning probability. This will
give us the count of people who won the highest prize and those who won nothing. This information
will be shared with the associates.

Final payments of the game: Participants will have sheets where the enumerator records all their
choices after each round. Decision-makers will play 10 rounds, 8 with an associate and 2 alone and one randomly
selected round being paid out. For decision-makers, they will pick a ball from the chosen container for
the implemented round. Associates will play 4 rounds. For associates, we will check if the decision-maker won that specific round; if
they did, the associate keeps the full payment, but if they lost, the payment is deducted from the
endowment. If they were not playing in the round chosen, they receive full payment. Payments will be given privately, and participants' sheets will be kept by the enumerators to ensure that participants do not know the final payments of others.

First, we divide the village into 6 sections, we will do a circular sampling strategy within the section. We interview a house in the boundaries of the section, we jump 5 houses and we interview a second house. We stop listing when we have found 2 eligible respondents (women between 18-35 years old). These respondents will be decision-makers. They list 3 friends and 3 relatives/in-laws and we select the 3rd of each group. We randomly form 2 groups of decision-makers and assign them numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 5, and 6 using Stata. We invite the decision-maker, the listed friend, and the listed family member. Pairs are predetermined before the game begins, and randomization is applied to the assignment of numbers. For example, in round 1, Decision-Maker 1 (DM1) will be paired with Friend 2 (F2), Decision-Maker 3 (DM3) with Relative/In-law 5 (R5), and so on.

Individual-round

No

N/A

414 individuals, 138 decision-makers (1380 decision-maker-rounds), 276 decision-makers (1380 associate-rounds).

Decision-makers:
No-associate round: 138 decision-makers x 2 rounds = 276 decision-makers
Associates no-signal round: 138 decision-makers x 4 rounds = 552 decision-makers
Associates signal round: 138 decision-makers x 4 rounds = 552 decision-makers

Associates:
Stranger round: 276 associates
No-signal round: 276 associates x 2 rounds = 552 associates
Signal round: 276 associates x 2 rounds = 552 associates