Introduction
Currently, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty worldwide. They suffer severely from hunger and lack of material possessions, and live on less than US$1.25 per day (World Bank, 2013). Large sums of money are spent on development aid projects to improve the living conditions of people in low income countries. In 2013, governments provided the highest amount ever to development aid, a total of US$134.8bn (OECD, 2014). This aid aims to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development in low income countries. For example, cooking stoves are distributed to decrease health problems, laptops are given to children to improve educational outcomes, or microcredits are provided so that people can develop their own income-generating activity. These examples all focus on improving people's living conditions in the long run.
To date, it is heavily debated whether investments in development aid can indeed improve the life of people in low income countries. One position, for example, argues that initial large investments are crucial to reduce poverty because they can help these countries to overcome their ‘poor’ position (i.e. they are hot, malaria infested, infertile, and landlocked; Sachs, 2005). Others (Moyo, 2005) argue that development aid worsens the situation because the way aid is distributed in these countries corrupts and undermines local institutions and creates powerful aid agencies.
Despite this discussion on the effects of investments in development aid in general, it is important to gain insights into how specific development aid interventions can change people's behaviour and achieve its goals. How can we study the effectiveness of such interventions? Which factors can increase its effectiveness? Does development aid have important (un)wanted side-effects? Social psychological theories and methodologies can play an important role in answering these questions. Social psychologists can help to gain a better understanding of when and how development aid projects are successful or unsuccessful in reaching their goals, by taking into account social psychological factors (see Chapter 1) and cultural differences. The first part of this chapter explains the importance of clearly formulating the primary goals and expected impacts of a specific development aid project and how the effectiveness of projects can be evaluated.