The Impact of Inter-Village Competition and Leadership on Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Myanmar and Cambodia

Last registered on May 07, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Impact of Inter-Village Competition and Leadership on Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Myanmar and Cambodia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004180
Initial registration date
May 07, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 07, 2019, 10:21 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
KDI School of Public Policy and Manageme

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
KDI School of Public Policy and Management
PI Affiliation
KDI School of Public Policy and Management
PI Affiliation
KDI School of Public Policy and Management
PI Affiliation
Seoul National University

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2019-05-07
End date
2020-12-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This pre-analysis plan describes the hypotheses and specifications that will be used to measure the effects of inter-village competition and village leader’s participation on individual behaviors in collective action problems. This study uses a unique opportunity of accessing 150 villages from 9 regions in Myanmar and 60 villages from 3 regions in Cambodia. 100 villages out of 150 in Myanmar and 30 villages out of 60 in Cambodia were selected as beneficiary villages for rural community-driven development (CDD) projects which Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) introduced in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MOALI) in Myanmar and Ministry of Rural Development (MRD) in Cambodia. The CDD projects in these two countries were initially designed after South Korea’s rural community-driven development experience, Saemaul Undong (SMU). Saemaul Undong, literally translated as “new village movement,” was a community-based integrated rural development program of South Korea in the 1970s that contributed to seasonal poverty elimination in the rural areas and alleviation of urban-rural disparity through village-level projects.

This study is motivated by the two prominent features of SMU projects compared to other rural CDD projects (Mansuri and Rao, 2004; White et al., 2108). Firstly, the SMU projects have introduced competition among beneficiary villages in a country and multi-year financial support to villages depends on performances at the level of village. Three key elements of performance were evaluated: (1) improvement of livelihood environment, (2) capacity building of village residents, and (3) income generation. Secondly, the SMU projects have emphasized a role of village leaders in achieving goals of CDD projects.

We introduce within-village randomized controlled trial (RCT) variations of inter-village competition and village leader’s participation in lab-in-the-field experiments regarding collective action problems. Specifically, we consider the problem of provision of public goods and the problem of investing in a risky joint project. In the former problem called the village donation game, individual participants are asked to donate for a village joint fund. Villagers are randomly assigned to the competition group where they make a donation decision with inter-village competition and the control group where they do so without inter-village competition. In the latter problem called the joint investment game, participants are asked to choose between a safe option (keeping an endowment for their personal use) and a risk joint project whose probability of success depends on the number of participants investing in a joint project. Villagers are randomly assigned to three groups: the leadership group where the probability of success depends also on a leader’s contribution in sacrifice of his or her material incentives, the competition group where participants join in inter-village competition with their investment decisions, and the control group where participants make a decision on joint investment with neither leader’s participation nor inter-village competition.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Choi, Syngjoo et al. 2019. "The Impact of Inter-Village Competition and Leadership on Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Myanmar and Cambodia." AEA RCT Registry. May 07. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4180-1.0
Former Citation
Choi, Syngjoo et al. 2019. "The Impact of Inter-Village Competition and Leadership on Collective Action: Experimental Evidence from Myanmar and Cambodia." AEA RCT Registry. May 07. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4180/history/46087
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Please, see the attached PAP.
Intervention Start Date
2019-05-07
Intervention End Date
2019-07-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Households' decision on public-goods game and joint-investment game.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Households' self-reported answers from the questionnaire
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Please, see the attached PAP.
Experimental Design Details
Please, see the attached PAP.
Randomization Method
Randomization done in field by a tablet excel sheet.
Randomization Unit
Individual households within a village
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
150 villages for Myanmar and 60 villages for Cambodia
Sample size: planned number of observations
8400 Households from 150 villages in 9 regions/states for the Myanmar sample and 3360 Households from 60 villages in 3 provinces for the Cambodia sample.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
8400 Households from 150 villages in 9 regions/states for the Myanmar sample and 3360 Households from 60 villages in 3 provinces for the Cambodia sample.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
KDI School of Public Policy and Management
IRB Approval Date
2016-12-09
IRB Approval Number
KDIS IRB 2016-01
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-Analysis Plan for Myanmar and Cambodia Research

MD5: 9958e25dfc602a79ae7cf775832cea3d

SHA1: 53b04ba80b8bd251c2aa23c693404c17c65392b2

Uploaded At: May 07, 2019

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials