Survey Data for WP9269: Demand for "Safe Spaces": Avoiding Harassment and Stigma 2015-2016 (Brazil)

Abstract

Sexual harassment on a woman’s commute is pervasive and widens the gender wage gap. To capture the economic costs of this violence, we randomize the price of a women-reserved "safe space" in Rio de Janeiro. We recruit 363 women riders to crowdsource information on their behavior and experience across 22,000 rides. Women riding in the public space experience harassment once a week. A fifth of riders are willing to forgo the equivalent of a 20% fare subsidy to ride in the "safe space". Randomly assigning riders to the "safe space" reduces the incidence of physical harassment by 50%, implying a cost of avoiding physical harassment of $1.45 per incident. While the reserved space is safer in relative terms, Implicit Association Tests reveal that commuters associate women riding in the public space with more openness to sexual advances. The welfare implications of creating women-reserved spaces are ambiguous.