Exploiting Network Information to Disentangle Spillover Effects in a Field Experiment on Teens’ Museum Attendance

Articolo di Silvia Noirjean, Marco Mariani, Alessandra Mattei, Fabrizia Mealli pubblicato sul Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics* il 26 luglio 2024 – https://doi.org/10.3102/10769986241254351

Abstract

A key element in the education of youths is their sensitization to historical and artistic heritage. We analyze a field experiment conducted in Florence (Italy) to assess how appropriate incentives assigned to high-school classes may induce teens to visit museums in their free time. Noncompliance and spillover effects make the impact evaluation of this clustered encouragement design challenging. We propose to blend principal stratification and causal mediation by defining subpopulations of units according to their compliance behavior and using the information on their friendship networks as mediator. We formally define principal natural direct and indirect effects and principal controlled direct and spillover effects, and use them to disentangle spillovers from other causal channels. We adopt a Bayesian approach for inference.

* The Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics provides an outlet for papers that are original and provide methods that are useful to those studying problems and issues in educational or behavioral research. Typical papers introduce new methods of analysis. Critical reviews of current practice, tutorial presentations of less well known methods, and novel applications of already-known methods are also of interest. Papers discussing statistical techniques without specific educational or behavioral interest or focusing on substantive results without developing new statistical methods or models or making novel use of existing methods have lower priority. Simulation studies, either to demonstrate properties of an existing method or to compare several existing methods (without providing a new method), also have low priority.