Urban Development Sociology of Metropolitan Bus Rapid Transit Corridor Land Acquisition Severance Payments and Street Vendor Displacement in Lagos's Transit Sheds: A Regression Discontinuity of Severance Thresholds

Regression discontinuity designs are frequently proposed for evaluating the displacement effects of compensation thresholds in urban infrastructure corridors, yet the statistical power of such designs under realistic clustering remains poorly characterised. Using a before-after-control-impact estimator with a declared variance structure (between-cluster SD = 6.0, residual SD = 4.5, intraclass correlation = 0.64), power was estimated across 2000 replications per design cell for cluster counts of 8, 16, 24 and 32 and effect sizes of 3, 5 and 8 percentage points. The analysis indicates that 52 clusters are required to detect a 5 percentage point effect at 80% power, a requirement that exceeds the 32-cluster maximum examined. Minimum detectable effects remain above 5 percentage points across the cluster range studied. These results imply that corridor-level regression discontinuity evaluations of severance thresholds in Lagos are likely underpowered, and that the intraclass correlation of 0.64 imposes a binding constraint on inference.