The Media or the Message? Experimental Evidence on Mass Media and Modern Contraception Uptake in Burkina Faso

Rachel Glennerster, Joanna Murray and Victor Pouliquen

No 2021-04, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Mass media can spread information and disinformation, but its impact is hard to rigorously measure. Using a two-level randomized controlled trial covering 5 million people, we test both exposure to mass media (with 1,500 women receiving radios) and the impact of a high-quality, intensive 2.5 year, family planning mass media campaign in Burkina Faso (8 of 16 local radio stations received the campaign). We find women who received a radio in noncampaign areas reduced contraception use by 5.2 percentage points (p=0.039) and had more conservative gender attitudes. In contrast, modern contraceptive use rose 5.9 percentage points (p=0.046) in campaign areas and 5.8 percentage points (p=0.030) among those given radios in campaign areas. Births fell 10%. The campaign changed beliefs about contraception but not preferences, and encouraged existing users to use more consistently. We estimate the nationwide campaign scale-up led to 225,000 additional women using modern contraception, at a cost of US$7.7 per additional user.

Keywords: Mass Media Campaign; Radio; Modern Contraception; Family Planning; RCT. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-ict
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a41bd05f-ed71-4001-8333-0f97b14d68a8 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2021-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey (csae.communications@economics.ox.ac.uk).