It doesn't seem likely that this type of thing will be a long term concern, but perhaps something can be learned about how society adapts if a significant subset decline the payment.
Consider if somebody walked up to you and offered to pay you 6k/mo, you would be insane not to question it. And in a country where "free stuff" doesn't happen, where corruption and entrapment are common, you would also be insane to accept it.
Several of my friends have spent time in 3rd world countries. Most had the modern, egotistical, charity tour and I would suspect that their particular brand of experience is what the experiment used.
There are many well run charities and organisations operating in these countries which fully understand the problems of interacting with people there and would have seen this situation a mile off. Those that have spent time with these charities have rightly laughed at my naivety and false superiority when talking about problems those countries face.
The upshot is - this is not a surprising result, this could have been expected and appears not to have been due to the poor practice of the organisation running the experiment. They are jeopardising their own experiment and have dealt a blow to both its credibility and the credibility of other BI experiments which already suffer from accusations of low quality science and superiority complexes. This is the long term concern.
Your hyperbole really bothers me here.
It seems to me that it is a survival instinct to refuse new things you don't understand from untrusted sources. Damn right that I do. The fact that I have a Western education and many years of Western life experience may mean that the reasoning I come up with is quite a bit better than someone lacking that, but it doesn't over ride a desire to not radically disrupt my current lifestyle - for better or worse - on a blind bet.
>They find it "hard to believe that a new organization like GiveDirectly would give roughly a year's salary in cash, unconditionally," Le writes. "As a result, many people have created their own narratives to explain the cash, including rumors that the money is associated with cults or devil worship."
Le creates his own narrative about the locals as less educated and less civilized than himself - why else would they refuse his charity?
It is clear that neither he nor his organization see the locals as equals.
"We've done a lot to try to understand what has led to this increase in refusals," Le wrote in the post.
From the blog post:
We’ve found that people typically refuse out of skepticism. Potential recipients find it hard to believe that a new organization like GiveDirectly would give roughly a year’s salary in cash, unconditionally. As a result, many people have created their own narratives to explain the cash, including rumors that the money is associated with cults or devil worship.
We’ve debated how much effort to expend trying to address the refusal issue. We considered leaving Homa Bay since working in an area with lower refusals would be better for efficiency targets and staff morale. However, ultimately we decided to stay because we are in the process of implementing a large scale research project in Homa Bay, and leaving the area would result in meaningful delays and cost overruns for our research partners. We also believe it’s important to try to address the issue here or else rumors could spread to other areas we’ve not yet been.
How on earth do you profit from people who won't take money because they think you are a cult/devil?