Experimental Design
Recruitment: I conduct a door-to-door listing survey in urban neighborhoods in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, India located close to clusters of garment manufacturing factories. Survey teams are allocated to residential compounds and all households are surveyed within the compound. In each household, at most one person is surveyed (any adult member available at home), provided the household has at least one member who works in a garment factory. During the listing survey, I collect demographic information on all garment workers living in the household. Respondents are informed that as part of the study we will share worker profiles with HR managers at garment factories that are looking to hire new workers in the coming months. Respondents are asked to indicate whether they or anyone in their household would be interested in being recommended for work opportunities, and if yes, they are required to fill out a CV form to confirm their interest.
Sample: I use the data from the listing survey to identify married couples where both husband and wife are currently working in a garment factory or have worked in one during the past year. The sample includes couples currently working in the same establishment and those who work separately. I exclude households that said they were not interested in being recommended for work opportunities and those that did not fill out the CV.
Incentivized Job Choice Experiment: Once eligible households have been identified through the listing exercise, a pair of enumerators will return to the household to complete the main survey. Both husband and wife will be surveyed separately. The survey modules include: demographics, work history, beliefs about commuting safety and workplace safety, gender attitudes, spousal control/relationship quality. A hypothetical job choice experiment is also embedded into the survey. Before starting the job choice module, the respondent is informed that the research team is in contact with several HR managers at garment factories located close by who are looking to hire new workers and have randomly selected people from each household whose profiles will be shared with these HR managers. Respondents are told that they will be asked to choose between a series of hypothetical jobs and their responses will be used by the study team, to learn what kinds of jobs they like, so we can recommend them to opportunities that are aligned with their preferences. The respondent is also informed that at the end of the survey the enumerator will inform them who has been chosen from their household for the recommendation opportunity.
Each respondent is shown 7 pairs of hypothetical jobs with randomly varying wages and amenities, and asked to indicate which job they would prefer if they had the opportunity to do both. I randomly vary the following features of each job: (1) monthly salary (2) commute time (3) whether the job has a single vacancy or is hiring multiple people so both spouses could work together (4) whether the job entails night shift work (5) provisions for women's safety in the workplace (6) whether most of the co-workers can speak the respondent's native language. Randomization is at the individual x question level, and I stratify by gender, experience (<2 years or >= 2 years), and whether the respondent is currently working at the same establishment as their spouse or not.
Couples will be randomly assigned to one of two arms, stratifying by their current co-working status:
• “Joint recommendation” arm: both spouses will be recommended to HR, so they may potentially be hired together.
• “Single recommendation” arm: only one spouse will be recommended to HR; husband or wife randomly selected with equal probability.
In the weeks following the survey, couples will receive up to 4 phone calls informing them about different job profiles, identified based on their responses to the discrete choice survey. If the household decides that the profile of the selected spouse(s) should be shared with HR for a specific job opportunity, they must confirm their interest by calling a hotline number managed by the research team.