Using Gossips to Spread Information: Theory and Evidence from Two Randomized Controlled Trials

Abhijit Banerjee, Arun G Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo and Matthew Jackson

The Review of Economic Studies, 2019, vol. 86, issue 6, 2453-2490

Abstract: Can we identify highly central individuals in a network without collecting network data, simply by asking community members? Can seeding information via such nominated individuals lead to significantly wider diffusion than via randomly chosen people, or even respected ones? In two separate large field experiments in India, we answer both questions in the affirmative. In particular, in 521 villages in Haryana, we provided information on monthly immunization camps to either randomly selected individuals (in some villages) or to individuals nominated by villagers as people who would be good at transmitting information (in other villages). We find that the number of children vaccinated every month is 22% higher in villages in which nominees received the information. We show that people’s knowledge of who are highly central individuals and good seeds can be explained by a model in which community members simply track how often they hear gossip about others. Indeed, we find in a third data set that nominated seeds are central in a network sense, and are not just those with many friends or in powerful positions.

Keywords: Centrality; Gossip; Networks; Diffusion; Influence; Social learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D85 L14 O12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (98)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdz008 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:restud:v:86:y:2019:i:6:p:2453-2490.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().