Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP12580
Authors: Marcel Fafchamps; Ana Vaz; Pedro C. Vicente
Abstract: Voter education campaigns often aim to increase voter participation and political accountability.Randomized interventions were implemented nationwide during the 2009 Mozambicanelections using leaflets, text messaging, and a free newspaper. We study the local peereffecs triggered by the campaign. We investigate whether treatment effects are transmittedthrough social networks and geographical proximity at the village level. For individualspersonally targeted by the campaign, we estimate the reinforcement effect of proximity toother individuals in our sample. For untargeted individuals, we estimate how the campaigndiffuses as a function of proximity to others in the sample. We find evidence for both effects,similar across treatments and proximity measures. The campaign raises the level of interestin the election through networks, in line with the average treatment effect. However, wefind a negative network effect of the treatment on voter participation, implying that thepositive effect of treatment on more central individuals is smaller. We interpret this resultas consistent with free-riding through pivotal reasoning and we provide additional evidenceto support this claim.
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Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Voter education interventions (K16) | Political participation (D72) |
| Voter education interventions (K16) | Interest in the election (K16) |
| Central individuals' participation perception (D70) | Turnout (D72) |
| Peer effects (C92) | Turnout (D72) |
| Reinforcement effect (C92) | Voter participation (K16) |
| Diffusion effect (C22) | Voter participation (K16) |