 Learning, Hygiene, and Traditional MedicineDaniel Bennett, Asjad Naqvi () and W-P. Schmidt Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York Abstract: To be effective, informational interventions must be convincing. Messages related to infectious disease prevention invoke the germ theory of disease, which may conflict with disease models from traditional medicine. A novel program in rural Pakistan attempts to make hygiene messages more convincing by using microscopes to demonstrate that microbes exist. In a randomized evaluation, we find that the microscope demonstrationstrengthens the impact of hygiene instruction on learning, hygiene, and health. The microscope demonstration weakens traditional medical beliefs, suggesting that traditional and modern beliefs are substitutes. Likewise, the intervention is more effective for nonbelievers in traditional medicine, which is consistent with Bayesian learning and suggests that traditional beliefs contribute to the burden of infectious disease. Date: 2014-08 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:14/25 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York HEDG/HERC, Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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