Does the Heterogeneity of Project Implementers Affect the Programme Participation of Beneficiaries?: Evidence from Rural Cambodia
利用柬埔寨农村收获后技术项目数据，发现项目执行者的利他偏好异质性显著影响农民参与培训的次数和比例，揭示了执行者特征作为处理效应来源的重要性。
This study employs the dataset collected for the assessment of a post-harvest technology project in rural Cambodia and focuses on the heterogeneous preferences of project implementers, frequently overlooked in the literature on programme evaluation studies. We focus on the ‘implementer effect’ on the programme participation of the treated farmers. We demonstrate that the heterogeneous programme participation of ordinary farmers could be induced due to heterogeneity in the characteristics of the project staff. In particular, we indicate that the baseline altruism of the project staff, measured by the dictator game, consistently increases the participation rate and the number of participations in the training sessions of beneficiaries. This type of heterogeneity in project staffs’ preferences across treatment sites could be a source of treatment heterogeneity for programmes conducted at a certain cluster level. While few studies have focused on the heterogeneity of programme implementers, our empirical results indicate that the preference of implementers could be a source of treatment heterogeneity and imply the importance of implementation of an actual project.