Identifying and decomposing peer effects on decision-making using a randomized controlled trial

Daichi Shimamoto, Yasuyuki Todo, Yu Ri Kim and Petr Matous
Additional contact information
Yu Ri Kim: Hanyang University
Petr Matous: The University of Tokyo

Empirical Economics, 2022, vol. 63, issue 2, No 16, 1029-1058

Abstract: Abstract Utilizing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in traditional clusters of apparel and textile firms in Vietnam, this paper investigates peer effects on firm managers’ decisions to participate in seminars on export promotion. We invited 131 randomly selected firm representatives to three one-day seminars on export promotion. We use the number of randomly invited peers to identify peer effects. We further decompose the invited peers into peers invited to the same seminar, those invited to the earlier seminars, and those invited to the later seminars. We find that the former has a positive effect on firms' participation, whereas the latter two have no significant effect. These results imply that peer effects on participation primarily arise from the benefits of face-to-face interactions. The presence of positive peer effects suggests that multiple equilibria in terms of the share of participants within each village of firms may emerge, which is also consistent with our observations.

Keywords: Peer effects; Social networks; Information confirmation; Word-of-mouth; Free riding; Randomized controlled trials; C93; D22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-021-02153-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Identifying and Decomposing Peer Effects on Decision-Making Using a Randomized Controlled Trial (2017)
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:spr:empeco:v:63:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s00181-021-02153-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... rics/journal/181/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00181-021-02153-w

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is currently edited by Robert M. Kunst, Arthur H.O. van Soest, Bertrand Candelon, Subal C. Kumbhakar and Joakim Westerlund

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().