Frictions in Social Learning

Last registered on March 31, 2022

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Frictions in Social Learning
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009102
Initial registration date
March 29, 2022

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
March 31, 2022, 3:17 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Texas - Austin

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Columbia University

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-02-01
End date
2022-09-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Social learning is considered a key source of information diffusion in development economics. Research on social learning has often focused on adoption of new technologies in agriculture, where recent findings suggest that information diffusion can be remarkably limited. For example, across different contexts: farmers are uninformed about farming practices of their neighbors (Duflo et al 2011); information diffusion only occurs within selected networks (Bandiera et al 2018); incentives are necessary to increase the flow of information in villages (BenYishay and Mobarak 2017).

Is information diffusion indeed limited? If so, what are the barriers and how can we overcome them? Recent papers have begun to dig into different barriers to sharing or seeking information, such as stigma in appearing uninformed and not wishing to be blamed for bad outcomes. We add to this literature, in the setting of small-holder farmers in Kenya, studying the willingness to pay for, and the diffusion of, two types of information: external information - that which may be provided by agricultural extension, and is not currently available among farmers in the village; and internal information - that which is already known to some farmers in the village.

For the external information, we elicit willingness to pay for the information, under different scenarios of who else will also receive the information. For the internal information - information about the farming practices of a knowledgeable farmer in the village - we test willingness to pay for the information, and run information sharing games in which we incentivize seeking or sharing the information, and vary whether or not incentives are made common knowledge.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Fabregas, Raissa and Jack Willis. 2022. "Frictions in Social Learning." AEA RCT Registry. March 31. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9102-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
As detailed in our experimental design, several of our outcomes are based on willingness to pay for information under different conditions. The main interventions of the project are when we provide incentives for social learning about farming techniques, incentivizing either sharing or seeking of such information, and keeping the incentives private or making them public.
Intervention Start Date
2022-03-15
Intervention End Date
2022-05-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
For the soil-test part, the primary outcomes are willingness to pay (WTP) of the original respondent (OR) for the information under the three different treatments, and the direct elicitation of WTP to keep information to themselves.

For the knowledgeable farmer (KF) part, the primary outcomes are WTP of the OR for the KF information, WTP of the KF not to share the information, and performance on the test at the end of the information game across the different treatment groups.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
For the soil-test part, WTP of the neighbor for the information.

For both parts, multiple survey questions contextualizing information sharing practices, and the importance of relative position, within the village.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We work with a sample of farmers who will call original respondents (OR) to do two exercises.

In the first, the soil test information exercise, we randomize the ORs into three treatment groups, and elicit their willingness to pay for the results of a soil test performed in the village, under the three different conditions (one per treatment group):

1. The OR will receive the results
2. The OR will receive the results and one of their neighbors will receive the results
3. The OR will receive the results. One of their neighbors already has the results.

For groups 1 and 2, after providing their WTP, they will also have their WTP elicited under condition 2 and 1, respectively (so the 3 treated groups are really 1 then 2, 2 then 1, and 3).

In the second exercise, with knowledgeable farmers (KF), we elicit the OR's WTP for information about the farming practices of the KF, someone who the OR has identified as being a knowledgeable farmer in the village. We then implement an information game, in which we give the OR one week to find out various pieces of information about the KF's farming practices. After that week, we test the OR on the information. We randomly assign OR-KF pairs into five treatment groups: a pure control, and incentives to seek vs incentives to share (paid according to performance on the test), cross-cut with whether the incentives are only disclosed to the incentivized party, or whether they are made common knowledge within the pair.

To provide additional information, we also do surveys with ORs, neighbors, and knowledgeable farmers, collecting information about information sharing practices and norms, and collecting WTP of neighbors for the soil test results, and WTP of knowledgeable farmers to not share information about their agricultural practices.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Randomization is at the individual level (the level of the original respondent)
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
400 original farmers
Sample size: planned number of observations
400 original farmers, 400 knowledgeable farmers, 150 neighbors
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
For the soil test experiment, original respondents are split evenly across the three treatment groups, which thus each have 130:

1. The OR will receive the results
2. The OR will receive the results and one of their neighbors will receive the results
3. The OR will receive the results. One of their neighbors already has the results

For the knowledgeable farmer exercise, original farmers are split evenly across the five treatment groups, which thus each have 80:

1. Pure control
2. Share incentive, private
3. Share incentive, public
4. Seek incentive, private
5. Seek incentive, public
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
UT Austin
IRB Approval Date
2019-12-03
IRB Approval Number
2019-10-0107
IRB Name
Maseno University Ethics Review Committee
IRB Approval Date
2020-04-30
IRB Approval Number
MSU/DRPI/MUERC/00843/20

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