Wikimedia Research/Showcase/Archive/2014/11

November 2014[edit]

November 14, 2014 Video: YouTube

Does Team Competition Increase Pro-Social Lending? Evidence from Online Microfinance.

In the first half of the talk, I will present our empirical analysis of the effects of team competition on pro-social lending activity on Kiva.org, the first microlending website to match lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries. Using naturally occurring field data, we find that lenders who join teams contribute 1.2 more loans per month than those who do not. Furthermore, teams differ in activity levels. To investigate this heterogeneity, we run a field experiment by posting forum messages. Compared to the control, we find that lenders from inactive teams make significantly more loans when exposed to a goal-setting message and that team coordination increases the magnitude of this effect.

In the second part of the talk, I will discuss a randomized field experiment we did in May 2014, when we recommend teams to lenders on Kiva. We find that lenders are more likely to join teams in their local area. However, after joining teams, those who join popular teams (on the leaderboard) are more active in lending.