Did some people purposely misreport outcomes in the hopes of influencing resource allocation?

While some respondents who experienced severe (and socially undesirable) outcomes may have reported them more honestly in the relative anonymity of an online survey, a different set of respondents may purposely have reported more severe outcomes than they experienced to try to influence resource allocation. This type of misreporting has not been widely studied, but Kaplan et al (2019) offer evidence that some vulnerable Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) households in South Sudan may underreport consumption in surveys. They link this behavior to a desire to influence the allocation of humanitarian assistance, and find that light-touch honesty primes reduce the gap in reported consumption between IDP and non-IDP households for respondents more likely to be underreporting and in measures more easily manipulated.<sup>8</sup> The framing and contexts of the PPCS and Facebook surveys suggest that strategic misreporting to influence resource allocation may have been more prevalent in the Facebook survey than in the PPCS. The role of the World Bank was prominent in the framing of the Facebook survey, with World Bank Surveys sponsoring the Facebook advert and the Bank logo branding the online questionnaire. In the previous year, the Bank had co-led a Rapid Damage Needs Assessment that informed international assistance strategies. Introductory text to the Facebook survey noted that the Bank wanted to understand how people had been affected by the May 2021 violence, but did not mention the importance of accuracy. By contrast, the PPCS was implemented by enumerators from the national statistical office (PCBS). The detailed adult individual interview inquiring about conflict exposure and mental health outcomes was embedded in a larger household survey, and 91 percent of PPCS adult respondents had previously responded to the Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey 2018 individual module (itself a continuation of a panel that started in 2013). At no point in this panel were respondents offered incentives to participate. The introductory letter sent to potential participants in the PPCS also emphasized the importance of providing accurate information.

# _Hypotheses_

H3a: Some people report more severe outcomes than they experience personally because they hope to influence resource allocation toward addressing these problems.

H3b: This effect was stronger in the Facebook survey than in the PPCS because in the Facebook survey the role of the World Bank was more prominent and the incentives to accurately report personal experience were weaker than in the PPCS.

# _Discussion_

Respondents who misreport their experiences in this way seem likely to be people who are not themselves experiencing severe outcomes but who have seen friends, relatives, or other acquaintances experiencing severe outcomes. The effect is perhaps less likely to have contributed to differences in the estimates of aggressive tendencies, as perceived aggression may discourage assistance. Beyond that, it is difficult to separate out this mechanism from other sources of difference in our data.

> 8 Purposeful misreporting and strategic answering behaviors are also explored in De Juan & Koos (2021) and Lund et al (2011).

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