Raising Health Awareness in Rural Communities: A Randomized Experiment in Bangladesh and India

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Siddique, Abu; Rahman, Tabassum; Pakrashi, Debayan; Islam, Asad; Ahmed, Firoz
• 署名单位: University of London; King's College London; University of Newcastle; Indian Institute of Technology System (IIT System); Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Kanpur; Monash University; Technical University of Munich; Khulna University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01182
• 发表日期: 2024-05
• 页码: 638-654
• 关键词: hygiene behavior; field experiment; interventions; improvements; tests

摘要

Delivering validated information to rural areas is a major challenge in low-income countries. In this paper, we study information provision to rural communities in the context of a global outbreak of an infectious disease-COVID-19. Two weeks after the initial lockdown in March 2020, we conducted a randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh and India to disseminate health information over the phone. We find that relative to information provided via SMS, phone calls can significantly improve people's awareness and compliance with health guidelines. We also find compliance to be substantially higher among women, which also persists after three months of the campaign.