Being Surveyed Can Change Later Behavior and Related Parameter Estimates
Michael R. Kremer,
Dean Karlan,
Richard A. Hornbeck,
Xavier Gine,
Esther Duflo,
William Parienté (),
C. Null,
Edward Miguel,
F. Devoto,
B. Crepon,
Abhijit Banerjee,
A. P. Zwane,
Jonathan Zinman and
E. Van Dusen
Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics
Abstract:
Does completing a household survey change the later behavior of those surveyed? In three field studies of health and two of microlending, we randomly assigned subjects to be surveyed about health and/or household finances and then measured subsequent use of a related product with data that does not rely on subjects' self-reports. In the three health experiments, we find that being surveyed increases use of water treatment products and take-up of medical insurance. Frequent surveys on reported diarrhea also led to biased estimates of the impact of improved source water quality. In two microlending studies, we do not find an effect of being surveyed on borrowing behavior. The results suggest that limited attention could play an important but context-dependent role in consumer choice, with the implication that researchers should reconsider whether, how, and how much to survey their subjects
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Downloads: (external link)
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11339433/surveyfx_2011.pdf (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:hrv:faseco:11339433
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office for Scholarly Communication ().