We estimate the effect of radio access on how many bed nets households report, including how many they purchased and how many they received for free. A serious problem of inference would arise if anti-malaria media campaigns were focused on those areas targeted for paid bed nets and avoided areas where free bed nets were distributed. There are numerous reasons to conclude that this issue does not arise in the Benin context.

First, policy documents indicate that donors and government exercise little real control over the pricing of bed nets, beyond issuing the general instruction of free distribution, everywhere. Second, even if they did, no documents that mention communications campaigns indicate that donors or governments modulate the campaigns according to their intended pricing strategies. On the contrary, the documents emphasize donor interest in both increasing demand for bed nets and promoting their correct usage: donors prefer to support programming wherever bed nets are distributed. For example, USAID, a major provider of both bed nets and communications programs, contracted with Population Services International to provide communications services. USAID emphasized in its request for proposal only the objective of increasing demand and proper usage, making no mention of pricing issues.<sup>8</sup> Finally, third, evaluations of the anti-malaria campaign in Benin suggest that donors have difficulties reliably implementing and coordinating their communications strategies, which would make coordination with pricing strategies even more difficult (Rwagacondo 2009).

Both the success of these distribution programs in reaching far-flung households, and the ability of local officials to charge for bed nets, are evident in our sample. The analysis is based on our survey of 20 randomly selected households in each of 210 villages across northern Benin. These 4,200 households responded to a detailed bed net module.<sup>9</sup> It asked respondents to list, for each bed net currently owned by the household, precisely how it was acquired. The options were: purchased from private sellers, purchased from government organizations, received as a donation from government, received as a donation from a parent or friend, or some other source. Of the sample households, 86 percent report having at least one bed net of any kind; 69 percent report having received at least one free bed net from the government; and 16 percent of households purchased at least one government bed net.

There appears to be considerable scope to increase the supply of bed nets to ensure full coverage of all household members. The average household in our sample reports 0.38 bed nets (both treated and untreated) for each household member. Our work is therefore undertaken in a setting in which the government could respond by providing more bed nets, whether free or for a payment, to households that place a greater value on them. A supply response could be particularly important for malaria prevention given that old nets are likely to have lost their insecticide treatment and have reduced effectiveness against mosquitoes (Dupas, 2009). Media access has no effect, however, on the total number of bed nets reported by households.

> 8 http://www.fightingmalaria.gov/funding/contracts/psi_coop-agreement.pdf.  PSI is a major contractor for the development of communications campaigns in Benin.

9 We do not, however, have reliable data on the actual usage of bed nets by households (who sleeps under the bed nets, how regularly, etc.), since information on these dimensions is particularly difficult to collect through multi-purpose surveys. Further below in the paper we discuss in more detail how to interpret our results on source of bed nets in terms of household usage. We also do not have sufficiently accurate data on whether the bed nets reported by households are properly treated with insecticides of the long-lasting kind or whether the insecticide is still effective. These issues are, of course, of critical importance in micro-experimental studies of take-up and use of bed-nets (as in Dupas, 2009). Our contribution is to examine the more macro effects of exposure to mass media.

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