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

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109873

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

dc.contributor.author	Diwan, Faizan
dc.contributor.author	Makana, Grace
dc.contributor.author	McKenzie, David
dc.contributor.author	Paruzzolo, Silvia
dc.date.accessioned	2015-12-03T16:22:46Z
dc.date.available	2015-12-03T16:22:46Z
dc.date.issued	2014-10-09
dc.description.abstract	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.	en
dc.identifier.citation	PLoS ONE
dc.identifier.doi	10.1596/23194
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10986/23194
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	Public Library of Science
dc.rights	CC BY 3.0 IGO
dc.rights.holder	World Bank
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo
dc.subject	business training
dc.subject	gender equity
dc.title	Invitation Choice Structure Has No Impact on Attendance in a Female Business Training Program in Kenya	en
dc.type	Journal Article	en
dc.type	Article de journal	fr
dc.type	Artículo de revista	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication
okr.date.disclosure	2015-12-03
okr.date.doiregistration	2025-05-06T11:38:48.580982Z
okr.doctype	Publications & Research::Journal Article
okr.doctype	Publications & Research
okr.externalcontent	External Content
okr.guid	718971467996649355
okr.identifier.doi	10.1371/journal.pone.0109873
okr.identifier.report	102464
okr.journal.nbpages	e109873
okr.language.supported	en
okr.peerreview	Academic Peer Review
okr.region.country	Kenya
okr.relation.associatedurl	http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109873
okr.topic	Private Sector Development::Enterprise Development & Reform
okr.topic	Gender::Gender and Education
okr.topic	Gender::Gender and Social Policy
okr.topic	Education::Lifelong Learning
okr.topic	Social Protections and Labor::Skills Development and Labor Force Training
okr.unit	Development Research Group (DECRG)
okr.volume	9(10)
relation.isAuthorOfPublication	148d6d6d-76e5-5d6f-9af9-98313e30551f
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	148d6d6d-76e5-5d6f-9af9-98313e30551f