Information, Leadership, and Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Ghana’s Artisanal Gold Mining Communities

The intervention centers on Poisoned for Gold, a 29-minute documentary produced by a prominent Ghanaian journalist. The film combines expert interviews, personal testimonies, and drone footage to convey the long-term health and environmental risks of mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM).

The intervention centers on Poisoned for Gold, a 29-minute documentary produced by a prominent Ghanaian journalist. The film combines expert interviews, personal testimonies, and drone footage to convey the long-term health and environmental risks of mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). The objective is to correct informational gaps, make the issue salient, and potentially activate community-level collective action.

In Treatment 1 (T1), the intervention targets only the traditional leadership. The documentary is screened via tablets in a private setting—typically the chief’s palace—for an audience composed of the chief, elders, and the queen mother. Following the screening, a trained facilitator leads a short scripted discussion, designed to prompt reflection but not to offer guidance or prescriptions. Facilitators are instructed to maintain strict neutrality and to respond to comments by referring back to the content of the documentary.

In Treatment 2 (T2), the same documentary and discussion are delivered in a public setting. Screenings take place in central community spaces. Community members are free to attend. The discussion format, facilitator training, and neutrality protocol are identical to those used in T1.

The control group receives no screening.

While the content and discussion script are held constant across both treatment arms, the difference in delivery method—private versus public—is designed to test the relative effectiveness and cost-efficiency of leader-targeted versus broad-based information provision.

2025-07-01

2025-08-31

Our primary outcomes focus on community-level collective action, measured through three key measures.

First, we elicit stated preferences via a secret-ballot vote conducted during a town hall meeting, where participants indicate whether they believe the community should adopt a bylaw to regulate ASGM activities.

Second, we measure financial commitment by tracking voluntary contributions made by participants to support a follow-up visit from a local environmental NGO. The NGO will present successful case studies from other communities and help facilitate community planning on how to mitigate the health consequences of mercury pollution.

Third, we assess residents’ willingness to engage in sustained collective efforts by recording the number of participants who sign up to join a local NGO chapter that will meet regularly to discuss, monitor, and coordinate responses to local ASGM activity.

Our secondary outcomes focus on the mechanisms through which the treatments may influence primary outcomes, as well as supplementary behavioral indicators of broader civic engagement. These include changes in knowledge about the health risks of mercury exposure. We also examine shifts in beliefs about the willingness of other community members to take action against galamsey. Additionally, we assess how participants perceive the chief’s stance on galamsey, and as part of our mechanism analysis, we systematically document the chief’s public statements and behavior during the town hall. To measure “global” collective action, we invite participants to sign a petition letter addressed to national authorities, expressing support for stronger enforcement and regulation of small-scale mining practices across the country. This outcome captures willingness to engage in civic action beyond the immediate context of their own community.

We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial with 111 rural communities in southwestern Ghana to evaluate whether exposure to a professionally produced documentary about the health consequences of mercury pollution can stimulate community-level environmental action in artisanal mining areas of Ghana.

This study uses a stratified cluster-randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether edutainment can stimulate collective environmental action in areas affected by artisanal mining. We began with a baseline survey in February 2025, interviewing 16 randomly selected households in each of 111 rural communities across six districts of Ghana’s Western and Western North regions. We also conducted structured interviews with each community’s traditional chief.

We randomly assign communities to one of three groups:
- T1 Leader-only viewing: The traditional chief and elders view a 29-minute documentary on mercury-related health risks privately. Immediately after, a community-wide town hall is held, where the chief is expected to convey his impressions and lead the discussion.
- T2 Public screening: The chief first views the documentary privately, as in T1. During the town hall, the same film is shown again—this time publicly with the entire community present, including the chief. This design ensures both elite and mass exposure.
- C Control: No documentary is shown, but a town hall is held using a standard script to preserve comparability in collective action measurement.

Randomization was stratified by district, community size, and chief's vested interested in mining. The intervention and town hall occur on the same day in all communities. Town halls include (1) a structured voting session where attendees cast secret ballots on potential community-level actions, (2) a contribution game, where town hall participants are invited to contribute voluntarily to support a follow-up workshop by a local environmental NGO, and (3) inviting town hall participants to join a newly proposed local chapter—a group that will meet regularly to discuss community progress and concerns regarding ASGM.

After the town hall, the same 16 households interviewed at baseline are re-surveyed to assess changes in knowledge, beliefs about others’ attitudes and willingness to act, and individual support for collective action. This endline survey allows us to probe mechanisms such as information updating, perceived social norms, and trust in leadership.

The design enables us to test whether information targeted at community leaders alone can catalyze change, whether broader public exposure yields stronger or different effects, and how chief's vested interest moderate the treatment effects.

Randomization done in office by a computer. The randomization will be stratified by district, community size, and chief's vested interested in mining.

Clustered randomization at the community level

Yes

120 communities

In each of the 111 study communities, we interview the community chief and 16 randomly selected households, yielding 111 chief observations and 1,776 household observations. In addition, during the town hall meetings, we collect behavioral and attendance data from all participants, which may range from approximately 30 to 150 individuals per community. These participants are not part of the structured panel survey but are included in primary outcome measure protocol.

37 control communities (C), 37 leader-only viewing communities (T1), and 37 public screening communities (T2)