Social incentives, delivery agents, and the effectiveness of development interventions

There has been a dramatic rise in the use of the local delivery model for development interventions, where local agents are hired as intermediaries to target benefits to potential beneficiaries. We study this model in the context of a standard agricultural extension intervention in Uganda using a two-stage experimental design. In the first stage, we randomize the delivery of the intervention across communities. In the second, in each community we identify two potential delivery agents and then randomly select one of them. This yields exogenous variation in social ties to the actual delivery agent as well as to their counterfactual. We use this to identify how social incentives shape the behavior of delivery agents through them having social ties to farmers in communities from which they are recruited and serve. We document a trade-off between coverage and targeting: delivery agents treat more farmers when they have a greater number of social ties, but they are significantly more likely to target their non-poor ties – counter to the pro-poor intent of the intervention. We explore reasons why delivery agents target their non-poor ties – finding that the social incentives of delivery agents are critical for their behavior. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the design of the local delivery model for anti-poverty interventions.