Title
Learn2Earn: Using Mobile Airtime Incentives to Bolster Public Awareness Campaigns
Abstract
In rural parts of the developing world, spreading awareness about critical issues in health, governance, and other topics is challenging and costly. Traditional media such as print, radio and TV each have limitations and offer little guarantee that new information is absorbed or retained by the target population. This paper describes Learn2Earn, a system that leverages mobile payments to bolster public awareness campaigns in rural India. Users call an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, listen to a brief audio tutorial, and take a multiple-choice quiz to check their understanding. People who pass the quiz receive a mobile top-up (about $0.14) and have the opportunity to earn additional credits by referring others to the system. We describe a pilot deployment of Learn2Earn in rural India that spread via word-of-mouth to over 15,000 people within seven weeks. Usage was concentrated among young men, many of them students. In a mixed-methods study, we draw upon call logs, electronic surveys, qualitative interviews, and other sources of data to suggest that Learn2Earn could be an effective way to build awareness about important topics.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3359151
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Keywords
DocType
Volume
HCI4D, ICTD, India, awareness campaigns, mobile payments
Conference
3
Issue
Citations 
PageRank 
CSCW
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Saiganesh Swaminathan1424.64
Indrani Medhi-Thies2143.45
Devansh Mehta301.01
Ed Cutrell42731205.59
amit sharma5379.53
William Thies657338.45