Today was the first ‘Game day’. As a part of our study, we are trying to further understand how people interact with one another, and use network analysis to look at how information and behaviors move through social networks. Since the beginning of the project, this is the day which I have been most nervous about.
We spent the morning gathering all of the scripts, making sure that the survey we were giving out was loaded on the computers, gathering white boards, and generally making sure that everything was prepared. As we were getting ready to leave, we had several things (such as raffle tickets, envelopes, and other random things) that we needed but couldn’t get to because they were locked in the dorm and nobody admitted to having the keys. So we discussed how to make replacements for all of these on the way out.
The reason that I have been nervous about today is that it is the day with the most things happening, and the most things which cannot really be predicted. As we went through the town, we assigned several people to be ‘mobilizers’ which meant that they were in charge of getting as many people to come to the meeting as possible. As an incentive, we told them that they would have a ticket put into a raffle for each person that cited them as the reason they came to the meeting. The goal of this is to better understand if there are certain types of people or positions within a community that are able to get a large number of people to work with them (think back to the AIDS example that I gave a week ago, how do we identify the people to train in AIDS prevention so that the most people will adopt safer behaviors). However, what this meant was that, depending on how effective these people were, we could have as few as three people there or as many as the whole town. We were shocked to see that, of the 70 people in town, well over half showed up.
We were warned beforehand to schedule the meeting for 1:00 if we actually wanted everybody there by 2:00. By about 1:45 we started to feel badly for people who had been waiting for half an hour and tried to start the meeting, only to be told that there were still many people on their way. A true example of Honduran time.
Once everybody was there, Jose took over running the show. He brought everybody outside so that we could set up computers inside, and began the speech which he had prepared. Obviously, one of the main goals of everything that we are doing is to learn information which can be used to help bring microfinance into this area, but many of the people in these areas do not know exactly what microfinance is or how it works. So Jose spent about half an hour explaining microfinance, how it worked, what it would mean to these people, why we thought that they were capable of using these loans productively, and taking any questions that people had. I was inside most of the time, but Alex told me that everybody was extremely interested and excited about what they were hearing. They asked questions for a long time, and seemed to have a general understanding of microfinance by the time they were done.
At that point, we separated people into groups based upon which mobilizer got them to come, and then brought them into the school in order to answer a short survey (which we refer to as the ballot to avoid confusion with the survey given to people earlier in the week). On this ballot, people told us who got them to come to the meeting, Voted for the person in the community which they felt would be best suited to be a representative to the microfinance organization when it is working in the town, and told us whether or not they had a ‘secret code’ and if so, who had told them this code.
Now, as we went through the towns, in addition to assigning mobilizers, we assigned the special role of ‘password holder’ so several individuals in the community. To these individuals we gave a password (such us submarine Amarillo which translates to yellow submarine). They were told that, if they gave this password at the meeting, they would be entered into a raffle and that they were free to give the password to anybody in the town. We also told them that different passwords were given to people in the town. What this meant is that, the more people a password holder gave this password to, the less chance he would have of winning the raffle, but the greater chance one of his close friends or family would have of winning the raffle. The purpose of this is to understand, when somebody has to chose between something that is best for himself and something that is best for those that he cares about, what does he do and who does he chose to help?
The survey, much like Jose’s talk, went surprisingly well and there were no unexpected issues that we encountered. By this time, I felt much more at ease than when the day started, but was still nervous, because there were two more events to take place before we left town: the public good game and microfinance game.
The public good game is a way to look at, when somebody has the choice between doing something that is best for himself and something that is best for an entire group of people, what does he do. In this game, each of 10 people is given 5 Lempira (which converts to about $.25 US). Each person has the individual choice of whether to put their money into a community pot or keep it for himself. The total amount of money put in the community pot is then multiplied by 1.5 and distributed equally to all 10 people, whereas money kept by an individual isn’t touched. This process is then repeated through a series of rounds, each of which starting with 5 Lempira and the same decision.
As an example, if nine people put their money into the community pot, this totals 45 Lempira. Multiplied by 1.5, this becomes 77.5 Lempira which is equally divided between the 10 people, giving each person 7.75 Lempira back. This means that each person who put money into the community pot makes 2.75 Lempira more than they would have otherwise. However, the one person who kept his money gets this same 7.75 Lempira back, but this is in addition to the 5 Lempira he kept, meaning he ends up with 12.75 Lempira.
On the other hand, if one person puts his money into the community pot, this 5 Lempira becomes 7.5 Lempira and each person gets only .75 Lempira back. The person who gave this money to the community ends up with only .75 Lempira, while each of the other nine people end up with 5.75 Lempira.
These two examples show that everybody in the group makes more money if everybody gives money into the community pot, but everybody who keeps the money for themselves gets 5 Lempira more than people who didn’t. In essence, the best thing for everybody is for everybody to put their money into the group pot, but the best thing for any individual is for that individual to keep his money for himself. The goal of this is to better understand what impacts people to make decisions which are best not only for themselves, but for the group as a whole. In relation to microfinance, payment groups are established because it is in each individual’s best interest to default on a loan, but in the best interest of the entire group for each person to pay back his own loan.
This game took a very long time, especially because we had to exchange small bills for larger bills every few rounds in order to keep enough small bills available to use for the next round. However, the results were interesting, with many people giving to the community pot at first and then a gradual descent as the game wore on. Then, in the last few rounds, the amount of people giving into the community pot jumped back up. This suggests that either people started to realize that it is best for everybody to give to the community pot, or that people felt bad for all of the extra money they were earning, and tried to make up for it in the last few rounds. We are not yet sure which of these is the case, but will figure out better as the game is run in the different towns that we are in.
The final activity of the day is the ‘microfinance game’. This game is easier to conceptualize than the public good game, and is meant to recreate the though process of people during microfinance. At the beginning of each round (of which around 5 are played) each person is given 10 Lempira to “invest”. A person may either invest this in a safe option, which pays back 100%, or an additional 10 Lempira, automatically, or in a risky option in which they flip a coin. If the coin lands heads up the person wins 600% of their money, or 60 Lempira. However, if the coin lands tails up, the person loses all money and is removed from all future rounds of the game. After everybody has taken their turn in a round, they must repay the initial 10 Lempira amount. In addition, everybody in the game must pay off any loan losses incurred by somebody who took the risky option and lost.
I thought that this was the most interesting part of the day. One interesting thing that we saw was that the women participating took the safe option every single time, while several of the men gambled. One man risked it several times and won and ended up with a relatively large amount of earnings, while another man lost and was eliminated, with everybody else paying back his losses for him. It will be very interesting to see if some of the trends from this game will be replicated in the different towns as we go through them.
With the conclusion of the microfinance game, we were finished and had only to pack up and go home. The entire meeting had taken four or five hours, but had gone much better than I could have ever expected. We all returned home happy with the work of the day, but looking forward to dinner and a little relaxation.
Not too much went on after dinner, a few of us went over to Albin’s for about an hour to discuss the menu for a barbeque that we have planned for Saturday. Other than that, we just hung out and recuperated a little bit. Tomorrow will be a day off for most people, although I think that a few people will be going into Las Playas to do surveying and get some stuff set up for a similar game day there on Saturday. That pretty much covers today so, until next time, adios.
Patrick
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