Stephanie: Thanks for posting my blog and offering your perspective. To answer your concern, the decision-making that I speak of here is at a normative, community level. My point was that IEC initiatives, which target the communities would do well to consider a loss aversion frame in their communication approach. The question is not what happens before the sensitization happens (clearly it is not a conscious decision in the absence of information) — the point of decision making with respect to changing behaviour with regard to open defecation occurs after the behaviour change communication happens. I surmise (and it is a surmise..) that the BCC might be more effective if it told people about how much they stand to lose, rather than how much they stand to gain from using toilets. Kahneman's experiments also dealt with preferences for certain gains and losses, of which certain losses were resisted much more than certain gains were valued.

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Stephanie: Thanks for posting my blog and offering your perspective. To answer your concern, the decision-making that I speak of here is at a normative, community level. My point was that IEC initiatives, which target the communities would do well to consider a loss aversion frame in their communication approach. The question is not what happens before the sensitization happens (clearly it is not a conscious decision in the absence of information) — the point of decision making with respect to changing behaviour with regard to open defecation occurs after the behaviour change communication happens. I surmise (and it is a surmise..) that the BCC might be more effective if it told people about how much they stand to lose, rather than how much they stand to gain from using toilets. Kahneman's experiments also dealt with preferences for certain gains and losses, of which certain losses were resisted much more than certain gains were valued.