Marcus Alexander, Laura Forastiere, Swati Gupta, and Nicholas A. Christakis

PNAS

A deep understanding of social networks can be used to create an artificial tipping point, changing population behavior by fostering behavioral cascades. Here, we experimentally test this proposition. We show that network-based targeting substantially increases population-level adoption of new behaviors. In part, this works by driving indirect treatment effects among the nontargeted members of the population (among people who were not initially part of the treatment group but who were affected by treatment of others in their population). The techniques we demonstrate can be easily implemented in global health (and elsewhere), as they do not require knowledge of the whole network. The novel pair-targeting technique explored here is particularly powerful and easy to implement.

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