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Strengthening Women’s Livestock Cooperatives in Nepal with an Innovative Technology Bundle

Last registered on May 20, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Strengthening Women’s Livestock Cooperatives in Nepal with an Innovative Technology Bundle
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014489
Initial registration date
September 27, 2024

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
October 07, 2024, 7:06 PM EDT

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

Last updated
May 20, 2025, 2:49 PM EDT

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

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Primary Investigator

Name
Travis Lybbert
Affiliation
UC Davis
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Matthew Spitzer Brooks
PI Affiliation
UC Davis
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-08-01
End date
2026-06-30
Keywords
Agriculture, Education, Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
For over a decade, Heifer Nepal has been developing female-led cooperatives to make producing goats more profitable for farmers. Two benefits offered by these cooperatives are access to government-licensed para-veterinarians called Community Agro-Vet Entrepreneurs (CAVEs) and opportunities to participate in collective livestock sales that leverage the bargaining power of the cooperative. However, challenges remain. CAVEs often feel isolated and find it difficult to develop their skills and support for challenging cases. Cooperatives struggle to organize collective sales due to their large and disperse membership and poor communication infrastructure. To address these challenges, we will implement and evaluate a bundle of technologies to help strengthen livestock cooperatives consisting of a digital Mentoring and Continuing Education (dMCE) platform and a digital Collective Marketing (dCM) tool.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Brooks, Matthew Spitzer and Travis Lybbert. 2025. "Strengthening Women’s Livestock Cooperatives in Nepal with an Innovative Technology Bundle." AEA RCT Registry. May 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14489-1.2
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2024-09-10
Intervention End Date
2025-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Intermediate outcomes for cooperative members include:
1. Number of visits by a CAVE or other animal health professional in the past month
2. CAVE services used
3. Share of animals vaccinated
4. Total payments for CAVE services

Final outcomes for cooperative members include:
1. Herd size
2. Goats sold
3. Goats sold through cooperative
4. Goat price received
5. Goat income
6. Use of other cooperative benefits (e.g., credit, advisory services)

Intermediate outcomes for CAVEs include:
1. CAVE knowledge
2. Number of clients
3. Client visits in the past month
4. Number of animal health services performed for clients in past month

Final outcomes for CAVEs include:
1. CAVE income
2. Women’s control over income
3. Index of women's empowerment in livestock

Intermediate outcomes for cooperatives include:
1. Number of sales events
2. Number of goats sold

Final cooperative outcomes are:
1. Total revenue
2. Value of loans made
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our unit of randomization is the livestock cooperative, where each cooperative encompasses multiple villages and hundreds or even thousands of members. We randomized in private using Stata. The randomization assigns 116 cooperatives—the current universe of HPN goat-marketing cooperatives with a working CAVE—to be equally split between four treatment arms: control, dCM, dMCE, and dCM + dMCE. Each cooperative has between one and four CAVES, all of which will be included in the sample. This design is motivated by the need to compare impacts on both goat farmers, CAVEs, and cooperatives, and by the possibility of either (i) pooling the two treatment arms together or (ii) estimating their separate effects relative to the control group.

For cooperative members, outcomes of interest will be measured at baseline and in two follow-up rounds: immediately after the peak goat marketing season in 2024 and following the peak goat marketing season in 2025. For CAVEs, outcomes will be measured at baseline and at four follow-up rounds. To estimate impacts on cooperative level outcomes, HPN will collect monthly data from cooperative officers, including three rounds of baseline data and 17 follow-up rounds. As with any study, our proposed work faces threats to internal validity.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done by computer in office.
Randomization Unit
Livestock cooperative.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
116 cooperatives
Sample size: planned number of observations
2,320 farmers
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
29 cooperatives control, 29 cooperatives dCM, 29 cooperatives dMCE, 29 cooperatives dCM+dMCE.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of California, Davis
IRB Approval Date
2024-09-03
IRB Approval Number
2102375-2
Analysis Plan