Rangoli art promoting toilet usage in Chennai, India
Overview
Funded by the Gates Foundation and in collaboration with the Swasti Foundation, we assessed the impact of a year-long (2020-2021) norms-centric behavior change intervention delivered via community outreach workers on toilet ownership and usage in target communities in two peri-urban districts of Tamil Nadu, India. The intervention was designed following formative research which established the conditionality of toilet use behavior on empirical expectations (what others do) in these communities. We used qualitative and quantitative assessments to measure and understand the intervention effect, implementation process and mechanism of impact of the intervention
Findings
Social Norms around Sanitation
At baseline, 69% of households owned a toilet in the intervention arm. We leveraged them as influencers and projected their improved behavior as the norm in the target communities. Awareness of how to access resources to build toilets and leverage their network for help to construct or maintain toilets improved. Our activities led to an increase in social beliefs that others around them were using a toilet (empirical expectations) across both the study arms suggesting considerable spillover across communities. With no other sanitation focused campaigns in the area, we conclude that our behavior change intervention led to improved access and use of toilet facilities in these peri-urban communities.
Interestingly we found that normative expectations of toilet usage (i.e. what others expect them to do) were higher in the intervention group compared to the control. Even though our messages were designed to shift only empirical expectations, household visits and peer group meetings which brought neigbors together to discuss their experiences, shifted normative expectations. These activities were effective in addressing household specific capacity and information needs related to sanitation. Seeing other people in their social networks discuss their experiences were effective ways to shift social beliefs.
Social Networks and Sanitation
Children are an important stakeholder/influencer in establishing norms. They were active participants during household visits, community events and even explained the resources to their parents or grandparents on relevant occasions. We used colorful stickers to indicate households with improved toilets, exclusive use and maintenance, that they placed near their front doors. We found that these visual stickes were low cost, effective levers for establishing the descriptive norm. People felt pride in owning these stickers, and those who did not receive one yet were curious and later motivated to get one like their neighbors. Use of WhatsApp for sharing messages was found to be limited in scope and application in this setting. We attempted to leverage local influencers (teachers, club members, youth leaders and connected housewives) and succeeded in activating them to influence their peers and those in their social network to improve their sanitation conditions