Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya

Business training programs are a common form of support to small businesses, but organizations providing this training often struggle to get business owners to attend. We evaluate the role of invitation choice structure in determining agreement to participate and actual attendance. A field experimen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Diwan, Faizan, Makana, Grace, McKenzie, David, Paruzzolo, Silvia
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Subjects:	business training gender equity
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23194

id	okr-10986-23194
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-231942021-04-23T14:04:13Z Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya Diwan, Faizan Makana, Grace McKenzie, David Paruzzolo, Silvia business training gender equity Business training programs are a common form of support to small businesses, but organizations providing this training often struggle to get business owners to attend. We evaluate the role of invitation choice structure in determining agreement to participate and actual attendance. A field experiment randomly assigned female small business owners in Kenya (N = 1172) to one of three invitation types: a standard opt-in invitation; an active choice invitation where business owners had to explicitly say yes or no to the invitation; and an enhanced active choice invitation which highlighted the costs of saying no. We find no statistically significant effect of these alternative choice structures on willingness to participate in training, attending at least one day, and completing the course. The 95 percent confidence interval for the active treatment effect on attendance is [−1.9%, +9.5%], while for the enhanced active choice treatment it is [−4.1%, +7.7%]. The effect sizes consistent with our data are smaller than impacts measured in health and retirement savings studies in the United States. We examine several potential explanations for the lack of effect in a developing country setting. We find evidence consistent with two potential reasons being limited decision-making power amongst some women, and lower levels of cognition making the enhanced active choice wording less effective. 2015-12-03T16:22:46Z 2015-12-03T16:22:46Z 2014-10-09 Journal Article PLoS ONE http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23194 en_US CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank Public Library of Science Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Kenya
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	business training gender equity
spellingShingle	business training gender equity Diwan, Faizan Makana, Grace McKenzie, David Paruzzolo, Silvia Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
geographic_facet	Kenya
description	Business training programs are a common form of support to small businesses, but organizations providing this training often struggle to get business owners to attend. We evaluate the role of invitation choice structure in determining agreement to participate and actual attendance. A field experiment randomly assigned female small business owners in Kenya (N = 1172) to one of three invitation types: a standard opt-in invitation; an active choice invitation where business owners had to explicitly say yes or no to the invitation; and an enhanced active choice invitation which highlighted the costs of saying no. We find no statistically significant effect of these alternative choice structures on willingness to participate in training, attending at least one day, and completing the course. The 95 percent confidence interval for the active treatment effect on attendance is [−1.9%, +9.5%], while for the enhanced active choice treatment it is [−4.1%, +7.7%]. The effect sizes consistent with our data are smaller than impacts measured in health and retirement savings studies in the United States. We examine several potential explanations for the lack of effect in a developing country setting. We find evidence consistent with two potential reasons being limited decision-making power amongst some women, and lower levels of cognition making the enhanced active choice wording less effective.
format	Journal Article
author	Diwan, Faizan Makana, Grace McKenzie, David Paruzzolo, Silvia
author_facet	Diwan, Faizan Makana, Grace McKenzie, David Paruzzolo, Silvia
author_sort	Diwan, Faizan
title	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
title_short	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
title_full	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
title_fullStr	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
title_full_unstemmed	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya
title_sort	invitation choice structure has no impact on attendance in a female business training program in kenya
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23194
_version_	1764453166422687744

Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya

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