Archive | 2019
Are the Effects of Informational Interventions Driven by Salience?
Abstract
Informational interventions have been shown to significantly change behavior across a variety of settings. Is that because those lead subjects to frictionlessly update beliefs? Or, alternatively, is it to a large extent because those increase the salience of the decision they target? We study this question in the context of communication with school parents. In a large-scale field experiment with ninth-graders in Brazil, we randomly assign parents to either an information group, who receives text messages with weekly data on their child’s attendance and school effort, or a salience group, who receives messages that highlight the importance of attending to their child’s behavior, but no child-specific information. While, compared to a pure control group, communication has large impacts on attendance, test scores and grade promotion rates, most of its effects are driven by salience: outcomes in this group improve by 89-126% of those in the information group. Our results suggest that alternative interventions that manipulate attention can presumably generate larger impacts and qualify the interpretation of previous findings, with direct implications for the design and welfare analysis of informational interventions across a range of domains.