The Effect of Prepaid Cash Incentives on Satisficing Behaviors in a Telephone Survey

• Activity Number: 185
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Rebecca Medway*+
• Companies: University of Maryland
• Keywords: incentives ; satisficing

Abstract

Extensive research documents incentives' ability to increase response rates; clearly, they convince some sample members to participate who otherwise would not have done so. If incentives influence behavior at the stage of deciding whether or not to participate, they may also affect the way that respondents act during the survey interview - in particular, their motivation to provide high quality responses. Existing research examining the effect of incentives on respondent effort has focused on a limited set of indicators - item nonresponse and responses to open questions - and has produced mixed results. This presentation aims to expand our knowledge of this topic by examining the effect of incentives on a wider variety of satisficing indicators, such as non-differentiation, acquiescence, and response order effects. The data come from a telephone survey in which some sample members received a prepaid cash incentive. I will discuss the effect that the incentive had on twelve indicators of satisficing, as well as whether or not the incentive's impact varied depending on respondent characteristics.