Rational Habit Formation: Experimental Evidence from Handwashing in India

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hussam, Reshmaan; Rabbani, Atonu; Reggiani, Giovanni; Rigol, Natalia
• 署名单位: Harvard University; Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee BRAC; BRAC University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20190568
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1-41
• 关键词: child growth; nutritional interventions; empirical-analysis; water-quality; short-run; addiction; diarrhea; sanitation; incentives; community

摘要

We test the predictions of the rational addiction model, reconceptualized as rational habit formation, in the context of handwashing in rural India. To track handwashing, we design soap dispensers with timed sensors. We test for rational habit formation by informing some households about a future change in the returns to daily hand washing. Monitoring and incentives raise handwashing contemporaneously, and effects persist well after they end. In addition, people are rational about this habit formation: when they anticipate future monitoring, they increase their current handwashing. Average child weight and height increase for all study arms given soap dispensers.