讲座题目：The Effect of Subsidizing Digital Educational Content: Evidence from a Field Experiment（补贴数字教育内容的作用：来自一项田野实验的证据）

主讲人： 曹竞存 香港大学 助理教授

讲座时间：2023年10月23日10:00

讲座地点：学院第三会议室A321

主办单位：betway必威市场营销与旅游管理系

讲座主要内容：

The unequal distribution of educational resources has been a major concern of both educators and policymakers around the world. The rise of the digital education industry brings new hope to the problem, but how exactly it affects existing education inequality remains largely unknown. Using data from a unique field experiment by an eBook app, we investigate the effects on K-12 children of improving access to digital educational resources. In particular, our analysis traces out both the short-run and long-run treatment effects of providing children with free access to digital reading resources, and how these effects vary across children with different socioeconomic backgrounds. We find that providing children with free access to digital reading materials leads to a dramatic and immediate increase in reading time for treated children, and that this immediate effect is much larger for children from less developed regions with fewer educational resources. However, children's reading activities decline quickly after the start of their free access. Surprisingly, this decline is much faster for children from less developed regions, despite their strong initial reaction to the treatment. Further evidence suggests that children from more developed regions benefit more from the free access in the long run. Our mechanism analysis further reveals a nuanced complementarity between digital and non-digital education and suggests that the long-run difference in reading patterns likely reflects differing levels of parental involvement in the education of children with different socioeconomic status. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of our study.

教育资源分配不均一直是全世界教育工作者和政策制定者关注的主要问题。数字教育产业的崛起给这个问题的解决带来了新的希望，但我们并不知道它究竟如何缓解教育不平等现状。基于一项在电子书APP上完成的田野实验，我们调查了提供数字教育资源对K-12儿童的影响。重要的是，我们的分析追踪了为儿童长期或短期提供免费数字阅读资源的不同效果，以及这些效果在不同社会经济背景的影响下是如何变化的。我们发现，为儿童提供免费的数字阅读资源显著增加了他们的阅读时间，而且这种影响对教育资源较少、经济欠发达地区的儿童来说更为显著。然而，在免费阅读活动开始后，儿童的阅读时长却迅速下降。令人惊讶的是，虽然在活动初期，来自欠发达地区的儿童的阅读时长的增长更明显；但是在后续阶段他们的阅读时长的下降速度更快。进一步的证据表明，从长远来看，来自较发达地区的儿童从免费数字教育资源中受益更多。我们的机制分析进一步揭示了数字教育和非数字教育之间微妙的互补性，并表明阅读模式的长期差异可能反映了处于不同社会经济地位的父母在教育参与程度方面的差异。最后，我们讨论了本研究的管理启示。

主讲人简介：

曹竞存博士，香港大学经管学院市场营销系助理教授。曹博士获得美国印第安纳大学凯莱商学院市场营销学博士学位，博士辅修统计学。研究兴趣主要集中在机器学习在市场营销学中的应用，大数据量化营销，新媒体营销，手机应用(APP)生态，在线教育，大健康等领域的实证研究。曹博士擅长使用多元化的分析方法，包含机器学习、计量经济学、统计学、田野实验等实证方法，研究消费者行为和企业营销战略决策，在Journal of Marketing Research等国际顶尖期刊上发表论文。曹博士在与企业合作，对企业进行数据赋能、流量变现、精准营销、品牌定位等方面有着丰富的经验,在美国印第安纳大学和香港大学教授市场学原理、大数据营销、数据科学家等本科及高管类课程。