Intervention (Hidden)
The intervention we are evaluating consists on a large information and deliberation campaign about the discovery of natural resources in the Province of Cabo Delgado, focusing on the recent natural gas discoveries. In collaboration with our partners, we randomly allocated 200 communities to one of the following groups:
A. Control Group. This group will not receive any intervention, neither information dissemination nor deliberation.
B. Information to the Elite (Treatment 1). This group will receive information about natural resources and its management that will be provided to the local elite only. We indicate as “local elites” the village leaders. In Mozambique, these individuals are well-defined figures in each community. At the level of the community ("localidade"), local chiefs act as the person in charge for the community. At a smaller level, there are also village chiefs ("chefes de aldeia"), neighborhood chiefs (“secretários de bairro”) or block chiefs ("chefes de quarteirão" or "chefes de bloco”). They are elected by the community even though the ruling party can strongly influence the outcome, through higher representatives in the government structure. The competencies at the lower levels (village, neighborhood, block) are mainly related to conflict resolution, land allocation, and formal ceremonies. These leaders also influence the allocation of aid and employment programs.
C. Information to the Elite and the Citizens (Treatment 2). This group will receive information about natural resources and its management that will be provided to both the population through community meetings and door-to-door contact, and to the local elite.
D. Information to the Elite and the Citizens plus Deliberation (Treatment 3). In this group, in addition to the intervention for Treatment 2, small citizen committees will be organized to deliberate about priorities for the spending of natural resource revenues.
The information being distributed includes the type of resources discovered, plans for exploration, and the legal rights of the communities involved. The final content of the intervention is being discussed and approved by all NGOs and governmental authorities involved in the project in order to guarantee widespread support and neutrality. Although this is a very time-consuming process, we believe it to be a fundamental step for the credibility of the project and to achieve interesting and usable findings for policymakers. Due to the low level of literacy in our sample, the interventions in this experiment will focus on verbal communication methods to deliver information. They will include:
a) Explanation in local language of the information content by trained facilitators;
b) Live impersonation of a community theatre, played by a team of three actors. The play represents a traditional family discussing the management of natural resources after hearing the news about the discovery of natural gas in the radio. The script was written by a local theatre company in collaboration with our research team;
c) Distribution of a three-fold pamphlet designed in collaboration with a local artist. The pamphlet is mostly visual and has the main takeaways of the information campaign. This will be hand-delivered in each treatment community to the leader (for groups 1, 2 and 3) and to the community members (for groups 2 and 3).
For the villages belonging to the group Treatment 3, the attendants willing to participate would gather in groups. The following procedure was followed. Firstly, during the community meeting, it was asked which attendants would like to participate in the deliberation. The implementing team would explain that the objective of the deliberation is to select 3 areas needing more investment in their villages in the case in the future they will start to receive rents from the exploration of natural gas. The results would then be shared with the local government. Then, at least 3 groups of 5 people were created, with the number of groups differing according to the total amount of people participating in the process. Participants would then gather in groups and chose the 3 main areas. The voting process was randomly selected in: raising hands, where after discussing the possible areas, voters would have to vote by raising their hands for the areas they think are most in need; secret vote, where each person would secretly vote for the first, the second and the third area of interest; normal method, where no restrictions were imposed. One team member would explain the process and register their votes.