Spillover Effects in Health Service Use: Evidence From Mental Health Care Using First‐Year College Housing Assignments
利用两所大学一年级学生宿舍分配的自然实验，研究发现当同伴群体定义为楼层时，同伴的心理健康服务使用会正向影响个人的使用，尤其对有过服务经历的人影响更大，机制可能是改善了治疗有效性的信念。
Spillover effects in health service use may represent an important externality of individual treatment decisions and are important for understanding the consequences of interventions to improve access to health care. This study is the first to our knowledge to examine causal spillover effects for mental health service use. We exploit the natural experiment of first-year student housing assignments at two universities using survey data that we collected. When the peer group is defined at the roommate level, we do not find any spillover effects on service use. When the peer group is defined at the hall level, we find positive spillover effects--peers' service use increases one's own service use--and this effect is driven by individuals with prior experience with mental health services. We also find some evidence that the mechanism behind this effect is improved beliefs about treatment effectiveness.