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Sources of Motivation in Business Surveys

Keywords: incentive, organization, respondent, survey error, survey participation, data quality

Survey organizations are typically faced with – and burdened because of – nonresponse and measurement errors in business surveys. These errors are assumed not to be so much a result of actual response burden as of perceived burden. This suggests that a driving force, i.e. the motivation for participation, and accurate and timely response, is lacking. Knowledge of sources from which this motivation comes from in business surveys, promises to enhance capabilities of survey organizations to influence the response behavior. This paper seeks to identify these sources of motivation based on motivation theory on the one hand and empirical data from the Netherlands and Slovenia on the other, and suggests recommendations for increasing motivation in business surveys. These recommendations should be a useful asset for survey organizations to develop strategies to improve survey participation and response quality.