Shifting Social Norms to Reduce Open Defecation in Rural India
Toilet ownership in India has grown in recent years, but open defecation can persist even when rural households own latrines. There are at least two pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of toilets in rural India: (i) beliefs/expectat...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/987801545256336106/Shifting-Social-Norms-to-Reduce-Open-Defecation-in-Rural-India http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31795 |
| Summary: | Toilet ownership in India has grown in
recent years, but open defecation can persist even when
rural households own latrines. There are at least two
pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of
toilets in rural India: (i) beliefs/expectations that others
do not use toilets or latrines or find open defecation
unacceptable; and (ii) beliefs about ritual notions of
purity that dissociate latrines from cleanliness. A survey
in Uttar Pradesh, India, finds a positive correlation
between latrine use and social norms at baseline. To
confront these, an information campaign was piloted to test
the effectiveness of rebranding latrine use and promoting
positive social norms. The intervention, which made
information about growing latrine use among latrine owners
more salient, reduced open defecation practices across all
treatment households, with average latrine use score in
treatment villages increasing by up to 11 percent, relative
to baseline. Large improvements were also observed in
pro-latrine beliefs. This suggests that low-cost information
campaigns can effectively improve pro-latrine beliefs and
practices, as well as shift perceptions of why many people
still find open defecation acceptable. Measuring social
norms as described can help diagnose barriers to reducing
open defecation, contribute to the quality of large-scale
surveys, and make development interventions more sustainable. |
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