Rural development cooperative radio-ownership rules and women's market-price information access in Uganda: a regression-discontinuity analysis of set-ownership thresholds

The study treats set-ownership thresholds as institutional discontinuities that determine which households may receive cooperative radio sets and thus which women can hear daily price broadcasts. Using a regression-discontinuity design applied to the DHS Program indicator 'Discontinuation due to access/availability' across 28 African countries and 74 country-survey observations from 1992 to 2025, the analysis estimates the effect of crossing a set-ownership threshold on reported discontinuation of access. The sample mean of the indicator was 1.712 with a standard deviation of 1.37, and country values ranged from 0.25 in Morocco to 4.90 in Lesotho. Ownership rules function as gendered gatekeeping mechanisms: where cooperatives tie radio distribution to set ownership, women's price-information access becomes contingent on household asset position rather than on cooperative membership. The contribution is a threshold-based account of information inequality that reframes radio access as an institutional design problem rather than a technological one. The conclusion draws out implications for cooperative rule-making and for the measurement of information access in rural development policy.