India finds changing social beliefs makes communities use toilets

An experiment in India found that changing what people believe about their community's sanitation habits significantly increased toilet access and usage. This means public health efforts can be more effective by focusing on social expectations, not just building more toilets.

Development programs have spent decades building toilets in communities. This paper shows that simply building infrastructure is not enough; people also need to believe their neighbors are using them and approve of it. This means future public health campaigns can achieve higher adoption rates by focusing on changing social expectations, making existing infrastructure investments more effective.