This paper studies the spread of compliance behavior in neighborhood networks involving over 500,000 households in Austria. We exploit random variation from a field experiment which varied the content of mailings sent to potential evaders of TV license fees. Our data reveal a strong treatment spillover: ‘untreated’ households, who were not part of the experimental sample, are more likely to switch from evasion to compliance in response to the mailings received by their network neighbors. We analyze the spillover within a model of communication in networks based on DeGroot (1974). Consistent with the model, we find that (i) the spillover increases with the treated households’ eigenvector centrality and that (ii) local concentration of equally treated households produces a lower spillover. These findings carry important implications for enforcement policies.

中文翻译：

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网络中的合规行为：来自现场实验的证据

本文研究了合规行为在涉及奥地利 500,000 多个家庭的邻里网络中的传播。我们利用现场试验的随机变化，该试验改变了发送给潜在逃避电视许可费的邮件内容。我们的数据揭示了一个强大的处理溢出效应：不属于实验样本的“未经处理”的家庭更有可能在回应其网络邻居收到的邮件时从逃避转变为遵守。我们分析了基于 DeGroot (1974) 的网络通信模型中的溢出。与模型一致，我们发现 (i) 溢出随着处理家庭的特征向量中心性而增加，并且 (ii) 同等处理家庭的本地集中产生较低的溢出。