In Simple Words
Imagine a library offering free books, but located a few miles away. Many people will not bother to make the trip just to pick up a book; however, if the library pays visitors a small cash reward for coming in, attendance skyrockets. Combining modest financial rewards with placing mobile distribution centers closer to where people live dramatically increases the number of people who collect their information.
Research question
Acquiring diagnostic health results imposes logistical and opportunity costs on individuals, creating barriers to learning personal health status even when testing itself is free.
Participants
N = 2,654 individuals across 117 villages in rural Malawi in 2004.
Study Design
Randomized field experiment offering financial incentives ($0 to $3) and varying location distance to mobile counseling centers.
Results
78.2% of respondents received a non-zero incentive averaging $1.016 (SD $0.897) at an average distance of 1.993 km (SD 1.242 km), resulting in 72.9% overall individual results retrieval rate (72.3% village-level mean, SD 0.186).
Takeaway
Offer micro-financial incentives and deploy decentralized mobile health stations to lower logistical frictions and boost diagnostic result retrieval rates.