How to Hire, Retain and Motivate Community Promoters? Experimental Evidence on the Role of Earning Expectations in Uganda

About this event

While there is a small but growing research on how to motivate and retain agents in the social sector, there is a lack of evidence on two questions: who are the 'right' people to recruit to perform a pro-social task? If agent's type is not fully observable, how can mission-driven organizations make sure to recruit the best agents? I design and implement a field experiment with BRAC, an NGO that recruits Community Health Promoters (CHPs) to provide basic health services to their community in Uganda. To examine the selection of CHPs, I use different recruitment treatments that vary the earning expectation from the CHP position. The hypothesis of this experiment is that the recruitment treatments will select CHPs who possess different motivations (money vs. pro-social), and those differences may predict long-term retention and performance. I additionally test whether framing a position as being better-paid signals something about the type of the job (more or less pro-social type of job) and how does this affect selection.