Exploiting network information to disentangle spillover effects in a field experiment on teens' museum attendance

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.