Effective treatment allocation strategies under partial interference (2504.07305v1)

Abstract: Interference occurs when the potential outcomes of a unit depend on the treatment of others. Interference can be highly heterogeneous, where treating certain individuals might have a larger effect on the population's overall outcome. A better understanding of how covariates explain this heterogeneity may lead to more effective interventions. In the presence of clusters of units, we assume that interference occurs within clusters but not across them. We define novel causal estimands under hypothetical, stochastic treatment allocation strategies that fix the marginal treatment probability in a cluster and vary how the treatment probability depends on covariates, such as a unit's network position and characteristics. We illustrate how these causal estimands can shed light on the heterogeneity of interference and on the network and covariate profile of influential individuals. For experimental settings, we develop standardized weighting estimators for our novel estimands and derive their asymptotic distribution. We design an inferential procedure for testing the null hypothesis of interference homogeneity with respect to covariates. We validate the performance of the estimator and inferential procedure through simulations.We then apply the novel estimators to a clustered experiment in China to identify the important characteristics that drive heterogeneity in the effect of providing information sessions on insurance uptake.