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Article
“Money Will Solve the Problem”: Testing the Effectiveness of Conditional Incentives for Online Surveys
Survey Practice (2016)
  • Whitney DeCamp, Western Michigan University
Abstract
Incentivizing survey participation through the use of cash or other rewards has often been used to encourage participation. This is often done with the hopes of increasing response rates and, therefore, representativeness of the responding sample as well. The effectiveness of incentives has generally been shown to be positive, but results have been mixed for conditional incentives and for online surveys. Using an experimental design, this study uses a random sample of undergraduate students to estimate group differences, incorporating both official and self-report data. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three different groups with varying incentives of five dollars, two dollars, or nothing. Results indicate that a five-dollar conditional reward credited to students’ campus ID card account does increase participation rates, which does improve the representativeness of the sample, but does not appear to significantly change substantive conclusions.
Keywords
  • Survey Incentives,
  • Response Rates,
  • Online Surveys
Publication Date
2016
DOI
10.29115/SP-2016-0003
Citation Information
DeCamp, Whitney, and Matthew J. Manierre. (2016). “Money Will Solve the Problem”: Testing the Effectiveness of Conditional Incentives for Online Surveys. Survey Practice, 9, 18-27. doi:10.29115/SP-2016-0003