**Table 4 (con’t):  Community radio access and household acquisition of bed nets**

|Dependent<br>variable:|Total bed<br>nets|Free gov‘t.<br>bed nets|Paid gov‘t.<br>bed nets|Total pre-<br>treated bed<br>nets|Free gov‘t.<br>pre-treated|Paid gov‘t.<br>pre-treated|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Literacy Center|0.0887|0.139|0.0115|0.137|0.152|0.00826|
|Dummy|(0.20)|(0.01)|(0.75)|(0.05)|(0.00)|(0.80)|
|Health Center or|0.0472|-0.0291|0.0262|-0.0471|-0.0666|0.0156|
|Maternity Dummy|(0.44)|(0.55)|(0.46)|(0.42)|(0.20)|(0.64)|
|Distance to closest|0.00470|0.00447|0.000340|0.00411|0.00448|5.91e-05|
|Bus/Train Stop|(0.00)|(0.00)|(0.67)|(0.01)|(0.00)|(0.94)|
|Observations<br>|3,736|3,736|3,736|3,736|3,736|3,736|
|Adj._R_<sup>_2_</sup>|0.27|0.18|0.11|0.21|0.14|0.11|

Note: All specifications estimated with ordinary least squares, with commune fixed effects. Robust _p_ -values, with standard errors clustered at the village level, reported in parentheses. Coefficient estimates of the following controls are insignificant and not reported: ethnic dummies (Adja, Fon, Bariba, Dendi, Yoa/Lokpa, Peulh, Goua/Otamari, Yoruba); age and gender of household head; and whether the respondent is Islamic. The following village controls are insignificant and not reported: whether the village chief has a primary education; whether a paved road serves the village; the distance to the closest urban center; the number of functional private schools; and the presence of a secondary school.

Table 4 reports six estimates of equation (1). The first looks at the effect of radio access on the total number of bed nets reported by households; the second focuses only on free, governmentprovided bed nets; and the third examines only the number of government bed nets that the households paid for (did not receive for free). Columns four through six repeat the analysis, but focus only on bed nets pre-treated with insecticide. All specifications contain the same control variables, including commune fixed effects, and are estimated using ordinary least squares. The first row of Table 4 reports the effects of access to non-commercial private (community) radio.

Taken together, the community radio coefficients across the six specifications support the hypothesis that radio access increases both demand for bed nets and a particular supply response – the diversion of free bed nets to the paid market by local officials. Columns 1 and 4 indicate that radio access has no significant influence on the total number of bed nets in the household. This is the result we would expect given the dominance of the national government in the supply of bed nets and the lack of national government responsiveness to citizens informed by community radio broadcasts. The second and fourth specifications show that more community radio access does not increase household access to free government bed nets, treated or otherwise. On the contrary, the coefficients are negative and large, though not statistically significant. The third and sixth specifications show that households with greater community radio access report more paid government bed nets.<sup>14</sup> These effects are substantively large when compared to other influences on bed net acquisition. Respondents who completed their elementary education did not have significantly

> 14 These results are unchanged when the paid government bed net variable is replaced with all bed nets purchased by households, including from non-government sources. However, there is no effect of radio on nets reported to be purchased from the private sector alone. This is not surprising given that government channels dominate the bed nets market in Benin.

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