The delivery of public goods relies heavily on the active involvement and effort of field agents, who become critical conduits for policy implementation. This is particularly the case in a developing country such as India,... [ view full abstract ]
The delivery of public goods relies heavily on the active involvement and effort of field agents, who become critical conduits for policy implementation. This is particularly the case in a developing country such as India, where field agents become the face of public policies. The role of the field agents assumes great importance due to the stakeholders associated with their performance – namely, the beneficiaries under various public policies, fellow field agents and to other agents under the administrative infrastructure. But, what encourages field agents to invest costly effort? Especially given the absence of any financial incentives, monitoring and decision making discretion? Further, can field agent performance be improved for efficient and effective delivery of public goods?
The current research investigates this puzzle by applying Prospect Theory (Tversky & Kahneman, 1992), Agency Theory (Eisenhardt, 1989), Motivation Theory (Frey, 1994), and the concept of limited attention (Karlan, Mc Connell & Mullainathan, 2010) to the challenge of focusing volunteer agents on a new policy in rural India. Agents, particularly field-level agents serve a critical role in the implementation of public policies at the grassroots. While there are a host of socio-economic and political reasons for poor field agent performance (Lipsky, 2010), this study focuses on the behavioural dimension. The investigation is situated in the context of field agents under India’s Rural Sanitation Policy. The policy was undertaken to address the massive public health challenge associated with poor sanitation. A UN report suggested that, of a billion people across the world who defecate in the open, 60% reside in India (UNICEF & WHO, 2012). This trend has been associated with poor health, nutrition and frequent morbidity (Waterkeyn & Cairncross, 2005; Fewtrell et al., 2005; Chambers & Von Medeazza, 2013).. To circumvent these challenges, the policy supported incentivized toilet construction in each rural household. The policy entrusts “volunteer” agents with the task of improving rural sanitation by “motivating” households to construct toilets. In practice, few toilets have been constructed (Coffey et al., 2014).
This enquiry examines the performance of 1400 field agents through a set of randomized field experiments, to provide causal estimates on whether periodic, framed reminders related to self and public benefit (tied to performance), can influence field agents to motivate more households towards improved sanitation. The experiments employed prerecorded voice reminders that were sent to the participants over a period of three months. The impact of these interventions was measured using administrative data, qualitative interviews, and field notes.
In answering the questions posed above, this research contributes to the literature on the role of material and prosocial incentives driving agent behaviour. The study proposes the use of behavioural levers as potentially low-cost tactics to improve agent performance under various public policies. This paper would add great value to the Behavioral & Experimental Public Administration panel as it attempts to discuss challenges in policy implementation in a developing country context; and, how behavioral economics can offer cost effective solutions to address such challenges by introducing nudges at the individual, implementing agent level.
F1b - Behavioral and Experimental Public Administration: Leadership and Decision-Making
