Chong, Alberto; Gianmarco León, Vivian Roza, Martín Valdivia y Gabriela Vega (2017). Urbanization Patterns, Social Interactions and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay. Barcelona GSE Working Paper: 1004.

Researchers use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of two informational get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns to boost female electoral participation in Paraguay. They find that public rallies have no effect either on registration or on voter turnout in the 2013 presidential elections. However, households that received door-to-door (D2D) treatment are 4.6 percentage points more likely to vote. Experimental variation on the intensity of the treatment at the locality level allows to estimate spillover effects, which are present in localities that are geographically more concentrated, and thus may favor social interactions. Reinforcement effects to the already treated population are twice as large as diffusion to the untreated. The results underscore the importance of taking into account urbanization patterns when designing informational campaigns.