Hidden Eligibility and the Credibility of Adoption

Public support for early adoption can affect what later users learn from observed choices. An adopter may have favourable private information, or may have received a rebate. We study a government that randomly assigns eligibility for a fixed rebate and chooses the program's coverage and reporting rule. We characterize when disclosing individual eligibility changes optimal coverage from zero to a positive rate under general convex program costs. This requires both a favourable marginal return to a disclosed program and a bound on the direct benefit available from a large opaque intervention. In the benchmark, disclosure allows the government to increase early adoption and welfare while leaving expected total adoption unchanged. We then allow imperfect compliance and private information for the late user. An eligibility label can be strictly informative without changing anyone's decision, in which case disclosure has no welfare value. The policy reversal survives when both extensions are present. The results identify when an eligibility record is a useful part of the design of an adoption program.