Up: survey-nonresponse

Question: Can incentives chase away people who still did not decide whether to respond or not? Do they have negative effect on “hard-to-get” people. (easy-to-get / hard-to-get / non-respondent)

incentives-presentation-flow

Literature List

  • ref_singer2018 — General view on incentives, can be used in introduction
  • ref_brown2016 ⭐ — Effect of a post-paid incentive on response rates to a web-based survey
  • ref_decamp2016 ⭐ — Effectiveness of Conditional Incentives for Online Surveys
  • ref_veen2016 — Effects of Prenotification, Prepaid Cash, Prepaid Vouchers, and Postpaid Vouchers in Online
  • ref_bosnjak2003 ⭐ — Prepaid and Promised Incentives in Web Surveys: An Experiment
  • ref_booth2024 — Effect of Monetary Incentives on Web Survey Response Rates
  • ref_spreen2020 — Varying Financial Incentives on Data Quality in Web Panel Surveys
  • ref_coopersmith2016 — Effects of Incentive Amount and Type of Web Survey Response Rates
  • ref_hsieh2016 — The Impact of Incentives on Participation Bias
  • ref_tiffanys2022 — Digital Payments as an Alternative to Direct Mail (preferences)
  • ref_sammut2021

General Line

  • The general message should be that incentives are helpful in increasing response rates
  • Once you have shown that incentives help increase response rates you may then add the question whether incentives actually decrease nonresponse bias.
  • So instead of a focus on potential increase of bias the key question is whether they help reduce bias or have no effect.
  • Even though in some cases there might be even an increase in bias, it is important to show that the expectations of the researchers (lower bias) are questionable.

Presentation Plan:

  • Introduction of the topic
  • Types of incentives
    • Monetary, gift, non-financial
    • Prepaid, Post-paid(promised), lotteries
  • Survey modes and effectiveness of incentives in general
    • Incentives and response rates
    • Types of incentives and survey modes tables shown together?
    • in different modes (some highlights) — compensations
    • incentives are more effective on self-administered ones
      • emphasis on whether there is an interviewer or not
  • Incentives and non-response bias
    • do they increase or reduce bias?
    • what to be careful about incentives
      • demographic backgrounds are somewhat important in incentives
  • Web surveys — Whys, why nots ref_sammut2021
    • Advantages →
    • Disadvantages → no interviewer
    • Problems with web-surveys: response rates
  • Applicability of incentives in Web/mail based surveys
    • Harder than physical surveys?

Risks of Incentives: Threats to Demographic Representation and Increased Bias

https://www.insidercx.com/tr/knowledge-base-article/survey-completion-incentives https://www.nbrii.com/customer-survey-white-papers/survey-incentives-response-rates-and-data-quality/ https://www.tremendous.com/blog/do-research-incentives-actually-increase-participation/ https://www.tremendous.com/blog/can-research-incentives-be-coercive/

Refs: