Prior research shows that religious institutions play a major role in shaping economic behaviors, social norms, and development outcomes worldwide. But what happens when religious membership (or belief) entails economic costs? For example, the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church prohibits the production of tobacco, coffee, and tea, effectively excluding its members from a major sector of the local agricultural economy in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In this paper, the authors examine how opportunity costs: the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen of religious membership influence membership in the SDA church, and whether and how local churches adapt to these economic realities. Importantly, the opportunity cost of joining the SDA church due to its production prohibitions varies across different regions—with higher costs in areas that are more suitable for prohibited crops—as well as over time—with higher costs at times when export prices for prohibited crops are higher. Using data on potential crop yields and regional export prices, the authors construct detailed measures of the opportunity costs of SDA membership for sub-national localities across Sub-Saharan Africa from 1991 to 2022. They then combine these opportunity cost measures with public data on SDA membership and other local statistics, uncovering the following:
- Increases in opportunity costs lead to substantial declines in new church memberships. During periods of non-zero opportunity costs, net membership growth falls by 10.4 percentage points on average, with the decline reaching 19.3 percentage points in periods when opportunity costs are in the top quartile (of the non-zero opportunity cost distribution).
- In addition, data from SDA member surveys reveal that when the economic costs of membership rise, members report less satisfaction with and less long-run commitment to the church.
- In terms of local church responses, increases in opportunity costs lead to the establishment of new educational and health institutions. These institutions may be intended to help attract new members, as well as offset opportunity costs for existing members.
- Local churches also appear to respond to increased opportunity costs by reducing the emphasis placed on the church’s healthy-living prescriptions, which undergirds the prohibition on coffee, tobacco, and tea. When opportunity costs rise, SDA members report hearing fewer messages about the church’s “holistic living” prescriptions from church pastors. In addition, increases in opportunity costs lead to more violations of the church’s prescriptions on healthy living, namely, more consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
Taken together, the results highlight how individuals take opportunity costs of membership into account when deciding whether to join a new religion, while local churches, in return, take measures to balance tradition and adaptation in response to economic conditions. These findings have implications beyond the specific context studied here. First, they demonstrate how economic incentives can drive religious change through multiple channels: directly affecting individual choices about religious participation, and indirectly by inducing institutional adaptation. Second, they reveal religious institutions as dynamic actors that appear to strategically adjust their practices and messaging in response to local conditions, while maintaining their fundamental identity. This adaptability may be particularly important in developing regions where religious prescriptions can significantly impact economic livelihoods.
More broadly, this research illuminates mechanisms of institutional and cultural change. While much work emphasizes the persistence of cultural practices, the authors document how religious institutions can facilitate relatively rapid adaptation to economic conditions. This suggests that successful religious movements may act as mediators of cultural change, selectively relaxing certain prescriptions while maintaining their core identity and values. In an era of rapid economic transformation across the developing world, understanding these dynamics of religious and cultural adaptation becomes increasingly important.