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.