Demand, Retention and Intra-household Usage of Free and Purchased Mosquito Nets in Rural Uganda

January 25, 2008

featuring 
Vivian Hoffman 
Ph.D. Candidate, Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University 

Friday, January 25, 2008 
12:00 p.m.--1:00 p.m. 
(Please bring your lunch—drinks provided.) 

at 
Center for Global Development 
1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Third Floor, Washington, D.C. 

REGISTER ONLINE 

Abstract: According to economic theory, the market will allocate a good to those willing and able to pay the most for it. This suggests that efforts to target durable health goods such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets to poor populations may prove ineffective. Moreover, resales of freely distributed nets could undermine the development of private sector distribution channels. However, wealth and endowment effects militate against the sale of in-kind transfers. I conducted a field experiment in rural Uganda in which households were randomly assigned to receive insecticide-treated mosquito nets, a cash transfer with which nets could be purchased, or the opportunity to purchase nets with their own resources. Willingness to pay and willingness to sell values were obtained using an incentive-compatible bidding mechanism. Results suggest that very few nets will be resold by recipient households. 

Further, whether a mosquito net was acquired as an in-kind transfer or purchased with a cash transfer affected who within the household used the net. The proportion of children five years and younger who slept under a mosquito net was 20 percent higher when nets were distributed for free compared to when an equivalent cash transfer could be used to purchase nets. This effect remains significant when controlling for the number of nets acquired. Nets purchased by men tended to be used by the household’s primary income earners whereas those purchased by women were used by the household members perceived to suffer from malaria most frequently. The fact that mode of receipt affects intrahousehold allocation can be used to more effectively target interventions at the individual level.

Download Psychology, gender and the intrahousehold allocation of free and purchased mosquito nets (pdf, 298k)
Download Do free goods stick to poor households? Experimental evidence on insecticide treated bednets (pdf, 214k)