Social proximity and misinformation: Experimental Evidence from a mobile phone-base campaign

This study was funded by the Department for International Development in the UK Government; the Tata Trusts through the Tata Centre for Development at the University of Chicago; the MacLean Center, the Becker-Friedman Institute, the Neubauer Collegium, and the Law School at the University of Chicago; the Sloan Founda- tion; SRM University; Northwestern University and the International Growth Centr. [...] The average effect on a given household in arm h of changing the share of other households given access to insurance via any arm (holding the treatment status of the given household constant) is labeled a “spillover” or “indirect effect” and is estimated as the sum of (a) the coefficient on the share sj of the sample in the village in arms 1, 2, or 3 and (b) the coefficient on the interaction betw. [...] The average effect on a given house- 27We tested this assumption for all outcomes by adding to the above specification the share of households given access in the village j′ closest to the household i’s village; for only 1 outcome (utilization of outpatient surgery) is the share in the nearest neighbor statistically significant (unreported). [...] This reduction in enrollment implies that the price elasticity of demand for insurance is -0.314, well within the range of estimates in the literature (Pendzialek, Simic and Stock, 2016a).35, 36 Our estimate of enrollment in the sale-of-insurance arm also sheds light on two questions in the literature. [...] (We define a high (low) wealth household as a household with an above (below) median value of on a wealth index created by taking the average of the following: z-score of the value of farm animals, z-score of the amount of silver, z-score of the amount of gold, the average of z-scores of different durable goods (stoves, fridges, etc.), z-score of land, z-score of the number of rooms in the househo.