The Economics of Choosing Traditional Medicine in India: Evidence from a Field Experiment

2025-06-10

2025-07-10

Uptake of Modern Medicine: Primary outcome. This can be measured as the proportion of participants in each group who report that they obtained and started taking an antihypertensive medication by midline or endline. At endline, we will specifically look at how many are currently using modern medicine (regardless of whether they also still use traditional remedies). Uptake can be further broken down into categories:
Full Switch: Using modern medicine and completely stopped traditional remedy.
Complementary Use: Using modern medicine in addition to traditional methods (dual use).
No Uptake: Still solely relying on traditional medicine.

Blood Pressure Change: Primary clinical outcome. Change in systolic and diastolic BP from baseline to endline for each participant. We will compare average BP reduction across the three groups. We hypothesize that both intervention groups will have greater BP reductions than control, due to more people taking effective medication. The cost arm might show the largest drop if it achieves the highest adherence, but the messaging arm could also show significant improvements if it convinced many to take the medication. Even a partial uptake (some days on meds) might yield some BP improvement. We’ll also track the proportion of patients achieving BP control (e.g. <140/90 mmHg) at endline in each group.

Continued Traditional Medicine Use: This is more of a process measure to see how people adjust their regimen. We will ask at midline and endline if they are still using their herbal or traditional treatments. This helps identify if modern meds are seen as a substitute (replacing the traditional) or as a complement. If the messaging works as intended, we might see high combined use in that arm, whereas in the cost arm, some might completely switch (or some might also combine; it’s an empirical question). We will also note if any participant in control spontaneously combined (some might have decided to try both on their own).
Beliefs and Attitudes: Although not the primary outcome, we will measure changes in key beliefs from baseline to endline:
Perceived efficacy of modern medicine for BP (e.g. "Do you think modern medicine can effectively control your BP?" – Likert scale).
Perceived efficacy/safety of traditional medicine for BP.

Trust in healthcare providers (traditional and modern).

Control Group: Receives only a baseline health screening and an information session on hypertension and treatment options. No further intervention is provided. This group serves as the benchmark to measure the effect of additional support.

Free Medication Group (Cost Coverage): In addition to the baseline session, participants receive free access to a recommended modern antihypertensive drug, either through direct provision or vouchers redeemable at local clinics. This arm isolates the effect of removing financial barriers to modern treatment.

Survey CTO randomization

Individual level

No

Participants were individually randomized into one of three groups using simple random assignment. Treatment was not clustered, and assignment was independent across individuals.

1800 patients with hypertension and mainly use traditional medicine for treatment

900