Urbanization Patterns, Social Interactions and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay

Produced by: 
Barcelona Graduate School of Economics
Available from: 
November 2017
Paper author(s): 
Alberto Chang
Gianmarco León
Vivian Roza
Martin Valdivia
Gabriela Vega
Topic: 
Politics and Economy
Year: 
2017

We use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns to boost female electoral participation in Paraguay. We find that public rallies have no effect either on registration or on voter turnout in the 2013 presidential elections. However, households that received door-to-door (D2D) treatment are 4.6 percentage points more likely to vote. Experimental variation on the intensity of the treatment at the locality level allows us to estimate spillover effects, which are present in localities that are geographically more concentrated, and thus may favor social interactions. Reinforcement effects to the already treated population are twice as large as diffusion to the untreated. Our results underscore the importance of taking into account urbanization patterns when designing informational campaigns.

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