International or national implementers—Who is better? Evidence from a framing experiment

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Lennart C. Kaplan,Jana Kuhnt,Katharina Richert
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.13008

REGULAR ARTICLE

International or national implementers—Who

is better? Evidence from a framing experiment

Lennart C. Kaplan

1,2,3

| Jana Kuhnt

1

| Katharina Richert

4,5

1

German Institute of Development and

Sustainability, Bonn, Germany

2

University of Göttingen, Göttingen,

Germany

3

Kiel Institute for the World Economy,

Kiel, Germany

4

Center for Evaluation and Development,

Mannheim, Germany

5

University of Mannheim, Mannheim,

Germany

Correspondence

Jana Kuhnt, German Institute of

Development and Sustainability,

Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn, Germany.

Email: jana.kuhnt@idos-research.de

Funding information

European Commission, Grant/Award

Number: Experts4Asia; German Research

Foundation, Grant/Award Number: RTG-

1723; Lower Saxonian Ministry of Science

and Culture, Grant/Award Number:

“Reducing Poverty Risk”project

Abstract

Behavioral economics has shown that changing small fea-

tures in framing a context or action may drastically

change behavior. A key factor characterizing most devel-

opment interventions is the salience of either a local or

an international implementer. Using the setup of an

intervention conducted in Indonesia, we show that the

studypopulationintheAcehnese context exhibits higher

levels of support for the project if the participation of

international actors is highlighted. We find that previous

experience with the respective actor is pivotal. Qualitative

evidence suggests that internationals' perceived skills

drive results, highlighting the importance of strengthened

local capacities for positive experiences with local imple-

menters. Overall, the study underlines the benefits of

linking framing experiments to the actual experiences of

respondents to generate insights into the real world.

KEYWORDS

behavioral economics, framing experiment, public health

1|INTRODUCTION

A large focus in the literature studying development cooperation naturally lies on its effective-

ness (Burnside & Dollar, 2000; Easterly et al., 2004). Support and uptake by the target popula-

tion are major factors influencing the success of an intervention. Behavioral economics stresses

in this regard the importance of non-monetary incentives that shape human motivation and

Received: 13 July 2022 Revised: 28 April 2023 Accepted: 2 May 2023

DOI: 10.1111/rode.13008

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distrib ution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2023 German Institute of Development and Sustainability and The Authors. Review of Development Eco nomics published by John

Wiley & Sons Ltd.

2538 Rev Dev Econ. 2023;27:2538–2564.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

behavior and consequently, the successful design of interventions (e.g., Ashraf et al., 2014;

Banerjee et al., 2010; Bowles & Polania-Reyes, 2012; Cole et al., 2013; Gneezy et al., 2011). One

of the core features of a project, which may affect the support of development programs, is typi-

cally the identity of the implementing team. Recent research stresses the importance of the

implementing agent for the behavior of the target group. Higher support for a specific grou p of

implementers could be driven by heuristics or behavioral biases, for example, stereotypes. How-

ever, these are usually based on underlying perceptions regarding the implementers. One might

not a priori prefer international or local implementers, but support those known for higher

implementation capacities, for instance. Dietrich and Winters (2015) and Winters et al. (2017)

show that respondents link higher quality perceptions to donors rather than the national gov-

ernment. Additionally, Findley et al. (2017) and Milner et al. (2016) demonstrate that respon-

dents perceive international actors to be less entrenched in the local political economy and,

hence, perform better with regard to curbing corruption. Another reason might solely be the

higher visibility among international donors (Vollmer, 2012), which is ultimately targeted to

affect recipients' perceptions. In contrast, the “home bias”-phenomenon suggests that cultural

proximity could increase people's trust with local agents (e.g., Fuchs & Gehring, 2017), where

particularly for development programs, local implementers may offer tangible benefits of con-

text knowledge. Cilliers et al. (2015) show that the presence of a foreigner versus a local as a

third-party bystander positively affects the contributions of participants in a dictator game in

Sierra Leone and identify two potential channels: First, an increase in contributions to impress

the foreigner and, second, reduced contributions in areas that were previously exposed to devel-

opment cooperation projects. In the latter locations, they show that participants more fre-

quently believed that the game tested their need for aid, and subsequently contributed less. The

previous exposure (here with aid) is shown to be an important factor in shaping perceptions,

attitudes, and subsequent support for projects.

We add to this literature and deepen it by linking the implementers' identity to beneficiaries'

actual work experience with those actors. For this, we make use of the introduction of the

World Health Organization (WHO)'s Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC) in Indonesia's Aceh prov-

ince (Kaplan et al., 2021). Two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths globally occur due to

causes, which could largely be prevented if well-established essential practices were followed

(WHO, 2018). The WHO developed the SCC, a four-page checklist to address the major risk fac-

tors for mothers and children around birth.

1

Despite a high commitment of healthcare pro-

viders during the launch events of the SCC, uptake was lower than expected (see also

Figures C2 and C3). We realized during our research that local association of the implementing

agents is likely to influence behavior of the target group toward the project. By conducting a

framing experiment among the health staff in a real-world setting, we causally assess whether

health personnel's support toward checklist use changes conditional on whether the participa-

tion of local or international agents in the project is highlighted.

Our results indicate that the change in support for the SCC project is due to the salience of

international versus local involvement. The population under study shows greater support for

interventions with international involvement. Previous exposure to both international and local

implementers drives those positive behavioral reactions toward international research projects.

A complementary qualitative analysis suggests that a more favorable assessment of interna-

tional agents' skills drives results. Increasing the visibility and branding of international actors

is a low-hanging fruit to encourage take-up. However, for a more sustainable implementation

in the long-run, one should investigate how strengthened local capabilities can create positive

experiences with local actors and ultimately increase project support.

KAPLAN ET AL.2539