Urbanization Patterns, Information Diffusion, and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay

Abstract

We use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns to boost female electoral participation in rural areas of Paraguay. We find that public rallies have a small and insignificant effect either on registration or voter turnout in the 2013 presidential elections. Households that received door-to-door canvasing treatment (D2D) are 4.6 percentage points more likely to vote. Experimental variation on the intensity of the treatment at the locality level allows us to estimate spillover effects, which are present in localities that are geographically more concentrated, which may favor social interactions and diffusion of information. Reinforcement effects to the already treated population are twice as large as diffusion effects to the untreated. Our results underscore the importance of taking into account urbanization patterns when designing informational campaigns.

How Effective Are Monetary Incentives to Vote? Evidence from a Nationwide Policy

“…We explore this mechanism in greater detail in section 7. It is also consistent with dynamic peer effects if the marginal voters affected by the changed monetary incentives increasingly drive others to also not vote as time goes by (Nickerson, 2008;Giné and Mansuri, 2018;Chong et al, 2019). A third possibility is that habit formation acts as a countervailing force and that those that are induced to not vote by the lower fine in 2011 become intrinsically less likely to vote in 2016, on top of new marginal voters that are affected subsequently (Coppock and Green, 2016;Fujiwara et al, 2016).…”

“…Additionally, our results on information acquisition relate to a small literature studying information spillovers of voter mobilization efforts (Chong et al, 2019;Fafchamps et al, 2018;Giné and Mansuri, 2018). While previous studies have directly provided information through salient interventions, we document the endogenous acquisition and slow diffusion of information about modified policy incentives in the wild.…”

How Effective Are Monetary Incentives to Vote? Evidence from a Nationwide Policy

“…Additionally, our results on information acquisition relate to a small literature studying information spillovers of voter mobilization efforts (Chong et al, 2019;Fafchamps et al, 2018;Giné and Mansuri, 2018). While previous studies have directly provided information through salient interventions, we document the endogenous acquisition and slow diffusion of information about modified policy incentives in the wild.…”

The salience of the Northern and Southern identity in Vietnam

“…Others focus on the layout of the village, with northern villages built on slight elevations emerging from rice paddies and southern villages strung in a linear fashion along canals (Rambo, 1973). Nonlinear (versus linear) villages structures can facilitate greater sharing of information (Chong et al, 2019), though it may also lead to greater corruption. Furthermore, in the long‐established and densely populated precolonial northern and central areas of coastal Vietnam, villages resembled “closed corporate communities” (Wolf, 1955).…”

“…Existing scholarly work suggests conflicting views on this topic. Research points out considerable differences between the regions, ranging from economic (Gainsborough, 2003; Malesky, 2004; Sanders, 2014), geographic (Chong et al, 2019; Rambo, 1973; Taylor, 1998; Zhang et al, 2006), to cultural (Li et al, 2017; Ralston et al, 1999). Those significant differences may suggest a salient north‐south division.…”