Leveraging Edutainment and Social Networks to Foster Interethnic Harmony by Abu Siddique

Join us for this week's event in the Experimental Economics Seminar Series, Autumn Term 2023

Join Abu Siddique from the Department of Political Economy, King's College London, as they present their research on Leveraging Edutainment and Social Networks to Foster Interethnic Harmony.

Abstract

Interethnic tensions pose a significant barrier to the socioeconomic advancement of minority groups. This paper investigates the effectiveness of educational entertainment in promoting interethnic harmony. We carried out a cluster-randomized experiment involving over 3,300 households across 120 polyethnic villages in Bangladesh. We find that disseminating information through a documentary film designed to educate the ethnically dominant Bengalis about the ethnic minority Santals in polyethnic villages increased the ethnic majority's altruism and solidarity toward minorities. Using emotion-detecting software to analyze facial expressions during the film viewing reveals that empathy played a significant role in this process. Additionally, we find that targeting network-central households with the intervention generated large positive spillovers on other households within villages, including those of the Santals. We further corroborate these findings through a separate casual work field experiment and through administrative data on police complaints and arbitration complaints to village counselors. Our finding highlight the power of edutainment and social networks in promoting interethnic harmony.

This seminar will be held in the Economics Common Room on Wednesday 15th November 2023 at 11.00am. This event is open to all levels of study and is also open to the public. To register your place, please contact the seminar organisers.

This event is part of the Experimental Economics Research Seminar Series.