Misperception or Discrimination? Gender Bias in Health Communication on Anemia Prevention

Seoyeon Chang, Sonoko Ishikawa, Naoki Miyamoto and Ryo Takahashi
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Seoyeon Chang: School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University
Sonoko Ishikawa: School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University
Naoki Miyamoto: School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University

No 2501, Working Papers from Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics

Abstract: This study examines whether gender bias in health communication reduces the effectiveness of information provision and explores the mechanism behind it. Specifically, it investigates whether the bias is driven by statistical discrimination—misperceptions about women’s competence—or by tastebased discrimination. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in Cambodia, where participants watched a video featuring either a male or female health instructor explaining the benefits of iron supplements for anemia prevention. To test the mechanism, half of those assigned to the female instructor condition received a corrective message addressing misperceptions about women’s abilities. The results show that willingness to pay for the supplement was significantly lower when the information was delivered by a female instructor, but this gap disappeared when the corrective message was provided. Similar patterns were observed in a list experiment measuring implicit bias. These findings suggest that gender bias reduces the effectiveness of health communication and is primarily driven by misperceptions about women’s competence rather than by taste-based discrimination.

Keywords: anemia; gender bias; discrimination; misperception; list experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hea and nep-sea
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