skip to main content
research-article
Open Access

Learn2Earn: Using Mobile Airtime Incentives to Bolster Public Awareness Campaigns

Published:07 November 2019Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

In rural parts of the developing world, spreading awareness about critical issues in health, governance, and other topics is challenging and costly. Traditional media such as print, radio and TV each have limitations and offer little guarantee that new information is absorbed or retained by the target population. This paper describes Learn2Earn, a system that leverages mobile payments to bolster public awareness campaigns in rural India. Users call an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, listen to a brief audio tutorial, and take a multiple-choice quiz to check their understanding. People who pass the quiz receive a mobile top-up (about $0.14) and have the opportunity to earn additional credits by referring others to the system. We describe a pilot deployment of Learn2Earn in rural India that spread via word-of-mouth to over 15,000 people within seven weeks. Usage was concentrated among young men, many of them students. In a mixed-methods study, we draw upon call logs, electronic surveys, qualitative interviews, and other sources of data to suggest that Learn2Earn could be an effective way to build awareness about important topics.

References

  1. SMS Achariya. http://www.smsachariya.com/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. SI Ahmed, MD. R Haque, J Chen, and N Dell. 2017. Digital Privacy Challenges with Shared Mobile Phone Use in Bangladesh. PACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW) (2017).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Asterisk. http://asterisk.org/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. J Berger. 2013. Contagious: Why Things Catch On .Simon and Schuster.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. CGNet. http://cgnet.in/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Dipanjan Chakraborty, Akshay Gupta, Gram Vaani Team, and Aaditeshwar Seth. 2019. Experiences from a Mobile-based Behaviour Change Campaign on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Rural India. In ICTD.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Manu Chopra, Indrani Medhi Thies, Joyojeet Pal, Colin Scott, William Thies, and Vivek Seshadri. 2019. Exploring Crowdsourced Work in Low-Resource Settings. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Jonathan Donner. 2007. The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via Intentional "Missed Calls" on Mobile Phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , Vol. 13 (2007).Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. A Fiszbein and NR Schady. 2009. Conditional cash transfers: reducing present and future poverty .World Bank Group.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. GiveDirectly. http://givedirectly.org/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Aakar Gupta, William Thies, Edward Cutrell, and Ravin Balakrishnan. 2012. mClerk: Enabling Mobile Crowdsourcing in Developing Regions. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro. 2016. The Short-term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: Experimental Evidence from Kenya. Quarterly Journal of Economics (2016).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. IMWalleT. http://imwallet.in/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. International Institute for Population Sciences. 2015--16. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4). https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR339/FR339.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Jana. http://jana.com/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Zahir Koradia, Piyush Aggarwal, Aaditeshwar Seth, and Gaurav Luthra. 2013. Gurgaon idol: a singing competition over community radio and IVRS. In DEV.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Ralf Kunnemann and Ralf Leonhard. 2008. A Human Rights View of Social Cash Transfers for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Brot fur die Welt, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (2008).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. Adam Lerer, Molly Ward, and Saman P. Amarasinghe. 2010. Evaluation of IVR data collection UIs for untrained rural users. In ACM DEV.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Jure Leskovec. 2011. Social media analytics: tracking, modeling and predicting the flow of information through networks. In WWW (Tutorial).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. HLR Lookups. https://www.hlr-lookups.com/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Meghana Marathe, Jacki O'Neill, Paromita Pain, and William Thies. 2015a. Revisiting CGNet Swara and its Impact in Rural India. In ICTD.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. Mobile telephone number in India - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone_numbering_in_India.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  23. Aparna Moitra, Vishnupriya Das, Archna Kumar, and Aaditeshwar Seth. 2016. Design Lessons from Creating a Mobile-based Community Media Platform in Rural India. In ICTD.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  24. Ramaravind Kommiya Mothilal, Amulya Yadav, and Amit Sharma. 2019. Optimizing Peer Referrals for Public Awareness using Contextual Bandits. In COMPASS.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  25. Neil Patel, Deepti Chittamuru, Anupam Jain, Paresh Dave, and Tapan S. Parikh. 2010. Avaaj Otalo - A Field Study of an Interactive Voice Forum for Small Farmers in Rural India. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. Paypal Terms and Conditions. 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180319113031/https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/invite/terms.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Frank Pega, Sze Liu, Stefan Walter, Roman Pabayo, Ruhi Saith, and Stefan Lhachimi. 2017. Unconditional cash transfers for reducing poverty and vulnerabilities: effect on use of health services and health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2017).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  28. Meghna Ranganathan and Mylene Lagarde. 2012. Promoting healthy behaviours and improving health outcomes in low and middle income countries: A review of the impact of conditional cash transfer programmes. Preventive Medicine (2012).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  29. Agha Ali Raza, Farhan Ul Haq, Zain Tariq, Mansoor Pervaiz, Samia Razaq, Umar Saif, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2013. Job Opportunities through Entertainment: Virally Spread Speech-Based Services for Low-Literate Users. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  30. Agha Ali Raza, Rajat Kulshreshtha, Spandana Gella, Sean Blagsvedt, Maya Chandrasekaran, Bhiksha Raj, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2016. Viral Spread via Entertainment and Voice Messaging Among Telephone Users in India. In ICTD.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. Agha Ali Raza, Bilal Saleem, Shan Randhawa, Zain Tariq, Awais Athar, Umar Saif, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2018. Baang: A Viral Speech-based Social Platform for Under-Connected Populations. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  32. Agha Ali Raza, Zain Tariq, Shan Randhawa, Bilal Saleem, Awais Athar, Umar Saif, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2019. Voice-Based Quizzes for Measuring Knowledge Retention in Under-Connected Populations. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. N Sambasivan and E Cutrell. 2012. Understanding negotiation in airtime sharing in low-income microenterprises. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  34. N Sambasivan, E Cutrell, K Toyama, and B Nardi. 2010. Intermediated Technology Use in Developing Communities. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  35. Mari Marcel Thekaekara. 2019. A huge land grab is threatening India's tribal people. They need global help. The Guardian.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  36. Triggerise. http://triggerise.org/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. UNOCHA. 2014. Ebola virus disease outbreak: Overview of needs and requirements. https://www.unocha.org/sites/dms/CAP/Ebola_outbreak_Sep_2014.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  38. Aditya Vashistha, Ed Cutrell, Gaetano Borriello, and William Thies. 2015b. Sangeet Swara: A Community-Moderated Voice Forum in Rural India. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  39. Aditya Vashistha, Ed Cutrell, Nicola Dell, and Richard Anderson. 2015c. Social Media Platforms for Low-Income Blind People in India. In ASSETS.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  40. Aditya Vashistha, Edward Cutrell, and William Thies. 2015a. Increasing the Reach of Snowball Sampling: The Impact of Fixed versus Lottery Incentives. In CSCW.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  41. Aditya Vashistha, Pooja Sethi, and Richard Anderson. 2017. Respeak: A Voice-based, Crowd-powered Speech Transcription System. In CHI.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  42. Aditya Vashistha, Rajan Vaish, Edward Cutrell, and William Thies. 2015 d. The Whodunit Challenge: Mobilizing the Crowd in India. In INTERACT.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  43. Nikolas Wolfe, Juneki Hong, Agha Ali Raza, Bhiksha Raj, and Roni Rosenfeld. 2015. Rapid Development of Public Health Education Systems in Low-Literacy Multilingual Environments: Combating Ebola Through Voice Messaging. In SLaTE (Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education), Satellite Event of INTERSPEECH.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  44. Susan Wyche and Jennifer Olson. 2018. Gender, Mobile, and Mobile Internet | Kenyan Women's Rural Realities, Mobile Internet Access, and "Africa Rising". ITID (2018).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  45. Amulya Yadav, Hau Chan, Albert Jiang, Haifeng Xu, Eric Rice, and Milind Tambe. 2016. Using Social Networks to Aid Homeless Shelters: Dynamic Influence Maximization under Uncertainty. In AAMAS.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Learn2Earn: Using Mobile Airtime Incentives to Bolster Public Awareness Campaigns

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in

    Full Access

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader
    About Cookies On This Site

    We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

    Learn more

    Got it!