The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa

We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to commun...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Keefer, Philip, Khemani, Stuti
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2018
Subjects:	MEDIA GOVERNMENT RESPONSIVENESS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION CIVIL SOCIETY MALARIA BED NETS HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNITY RADIO PUBLIC HEALTH
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29119

id	okr-10986-29119
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-291192021-05-25T10:54:42Z The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa Keefer, Philip Khemani, Stuti MEDIA GOVERNMENT RESPONSIVENESS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION CIVIL SOCIETY MALARIA BED NETS HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNITY RADIO PUBLIC HEALTH We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to community radio increased their demand for those benefits. Households with greater access to community radio were more likely to pay for government-provided bed nets to combat malaria than to receive them for free. Mass media changed the private behavior of citizens—they invested more of their own resources in the public health good of bed nets—but not citizens’ ability to extract greater benefits from government. While the welfare consequences of these results are ambiguous, the pattern of radio's effects that we uncover has implications for policy strategies to use mass media for development objectives. 2018-01-03T18:27:00Z 2018-01-03T18:27:00Z 2016-07-01 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29119 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Africa Benin
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	MEDIA GOVERNMENT RESPONSIVENESS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION CIVIL SOCIETY MALARIA BED NETS HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNITY RADIO PUBLIC HEALTH
spellingShingle	MEDIA GOVERNMENT RESPONSIVENESS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION CIVIL SOCIETY MALARIA BED NETS HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNITY RADIO PUBLIC HEALTH Keefer, Philip Khemani, Stuti The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
geographic_facet	Africa Benin
description	We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to community radio increased their demand for those benefits. Households with greater access to community radio were more likely to pay for government-provided bed nets to combat malaria than to receive them for free. Mass media changed the private behavior of citizens—they invested more of their own resources in the public health good of bed nets—but not citizens’ ability to extract greater benefits from government. While the welfare consequences of these results are ambiguous, the pattern of radio's effects that we uncover has implications for policy strategies to use mass media for development objectives.
format	Journal Article
author	Keefer, Philip Khemani, Stuti
author_facet	Keefer, Philip Khemani, Stuti
author_sort	Keefer, Philip
title	The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
title_short	The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
title_full	The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
title_fullStr	The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
title_full_unstemmed	The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa
title_sort	government response to informed citizens : new evidence on media access and the distribution of public health benefits in africa
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2018
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29119
_version_	1764468542745346048

The Government Response to Informed Citizens : New Evidence on Media Access and the Distribution of Public Health Benefits in Africa

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