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Trial Title
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Aspirational Hope: An Empirical Study with Farmers in Bolivia
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Aspirational Hope and Productivity: A Randomized Control Trial Among Dairy Farmers in Bolivia
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Abstract
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Internal constrains are gaining attention in development economics since they can help understand poverty dynamics. Focusing on aspirational hope, our study aims to relax these constraints among farmers in Bolivia. We intend to improve their aspirations, perceived agency and visualization of pathways.
We visit farmers three times with intervals of two weeks. During each visit, we show them a 15-minute video and give them a 30-minute coaching session. The video presents two role models that have successfully grown their milk producing business over the last years. The coaching sessions deepen the three aspects of aspirational hope. The first session focuses only on aspirations, the second session comprises pathways and perceived agency, and the last session summarizes the three aspects.
To evaluate our intervention, we measure the impact on three families of outcomes: aspirational hope, agricultural practices, and production and productivity. For aspirational hope, we will use indexes of aspirations, pathways and agency. For agricultural practices, we will create indexes of cattle sanitation, cattle nutrition, cattle reproduction and cattle management. Finally, for production and productivity, we construct indicators from self-reported and administrative data, such as, daily milk production (liters), daily milk production per cow (liters), bi-weekly milk delivery to milk company (liters). The sample size is 549 milk producers in the Bolivian Plateau organized in 52 delivery points (modules). We stratify our sample by municipality and number of farmers in delivery points (module size). Then, we randomly assign half of the modules to either treatment or control groups.
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Internal constrains are receiving increasing attention in development economics, since they can help understand poverty dynamics. Focusing on these constraints, our study evaluates the impacts of an aspirational hope intervention among Bolivian milk producers. The intervention consists of showing farmers a video of local role models, followed by a series of workshops on aspirational hope, referred to as ‘hope curriculum’. We hypothesize that our intervention can reduce aspirational failure and assuage learned hopelessness, improving aspirations and consequently productivity. Our setting is uniquely placed to bridge the gap between aspirations and productivity, and study changes in the latter. Contrary to previous work on aspirations, our sample is relatively homogeneous and comprised entirely of smallholder dairy farmers—facilitating the measurement and comparison of productivity. We work with 549 milk producers organized in 52 milk delivery points. We stratify our sample by municipality and number of farmers in delivery points. Then, we randomly assign half of the delivery points to either treatment or control groups.
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Last Published
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July 08, 2019 10:22 AM
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August 30, 2019 07:56 PM
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Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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We use three main outcome families:
Aspirational hope as aspirations, pathways and perceived agency
Agricultural practices
Production and productivity
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We use four main outcome families:
1. Aspirational hope
2. Aspired productivity
3. Productivity
4. Practices
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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1. Aspirational hope
We use three indexes (aspirations, pathways and agency) based on Lybbert & Wydick (2017) and originally by Snyder (1994). We construct each index based on the farmers’ level of agreement with four sentences (from 6-totally agree to 1-totally disagree), following Kling et al. (2007) or Anderson (2008).
a) Aspirations index
- According to you, it is better to learn to accept the reality of things than to dream of a better future.
- According to you, it is better to have aspirations for your family than to accept each day as it comes.
- When you have a milk business, it is important to set goals.
- You have specific goals and plans for the future growth of your milk business.
b) Pathways index
- You can think of many ways to get out of a jam.
- There are many opportunities around you to reach your goals.
- According to you, there are lots of ways around any problem.
- When you cannot sell your milk to a buyer, you can use and/or transform it so it does not get lost.
c) Agency index
- You energetically pursue your goals.
- Your past experiences have prepared you well for your future.
- Your personal effort and that of your family is the main reason for your achievements and successes.
- You meet the goals that you set for yourself.
2. Aspired productivity
We ask farmers their aspired daily production and their aspired number of cows they would like to have in two years. Then, we construct the productivity variable by dividing the aspired daily produced liters of milk over the aspired number of milking cows in 2 years. As robustness check we will take the logarithmic transformation of these variables.
3. Productivity
We calculate the average daily produced liters of milk as the mean of the produced liters of milk on the day of the survey and the two previous days. We directly ask farmers their number of milking cows currently active (i.e. not pregnant or too young or old to be milked). Then, we use the ratio of these two variables to calculate the productivity per cow. We will take the logarithmic transformation as a robustness check.
4. With the aid of local agronomists and veterinarians we developed three indexes around productivity enhancing practices, quality increasing practices and information-seeking behavior. Farmers respond yes or no to whether they apply the following practices in the last three months. We will take the raw sum of positive answers as a proxy. As a robustness check we will also transform the index to extract its underlying factor, using factor analysis.
We argue that changes in practices are correlated to changes in perceived pathways and agency. Therefore, we expect to find changes in productivity enhancing practices and quality increasing practices if the agency index changes and to find changes in information-seeking behavior if pathways index changes.
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Randomization Unit
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We randomize at module level. A module is composed of farmers organized to deliver milk to a milk company altogether in the same location. A module is a smaller unit than a community, e.g. there can be one or more modules within a community.
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We cluster farmers at delivery point level. A delivery point is composed of farmers organized to deliver milk to a milk company altogether in the same location. A delivery point is a smaller unit than a community, e.g. there can be one or more delivery points within a community.
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Planned Number of Clusters
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52 modules
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52 delivery points
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Additional Keyword(s)
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Hope, Aspirations, Productivity, Farming
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Hope, Aspirations, Productivity, Dairy Farming
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Keyword(s)
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Agriculture, Other, Welfare
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Agriculture, Firms And Productivity, Other, Welfare
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Pi as first author
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No
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Yes
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