EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Learning, Hygiene and Traditional Medicine

Daniel Bennett, Asjad Naqvi () and Wolf‐Peter Schmidt

Economic Journal, 2018, vol. 128, issue 612, F545-F574

Abstract: Information provision is only an effective behaviour‐change strategy if the information is credible. A novel programme augments conventional hygiene instruction by showing participants everyday microbes under a microscope. Through a randomised evaluation in Pakistan, we show that this programme leads to meaningful hygiene and health improvements, while instruction alone does not. Traditional medicine, which offers an alternative disease model, may undermine learning by strengthening prior beliefs about hygiene. We show that believers in traditional medicine have smaller impacts, suggesting that traditional and modern medical beliefs are substitutes and that traditional medicine may exacerbate the infectious disease burden in this context.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12549

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning, Hygiene, and Traditional Medicine (2014) Downloads
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:wly:econjl:v:128:y:2018:i:612:p:f545-f574

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1468-0297

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Estelle Cantillon, Martin Cripps, Andrea Galeotti, Morten Ravn, Kjell G. Salvanes, Frederic Vermeulen, Hans-Joachim Voth and Rachel Kranton

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:wly:econjl:v:128:y:2018:i:612:p:f545-f574