Journal Article

Applying prospect theory to participation in a CAPI/web panel survey

Authors

Publication date

15 Aug 2019

Summary

Prospect theory states that the influential power of avoiding negative outcomes is stronger than that of achieving positive outcomes. In a survey context, this theory has been tested with respect to not only participation in a CATI survey, but also giving consent to data linkage in CATI surveys. No study, however, has tested the theory with respect to participation in a CAPI or web survey. This study does so in a mixed-mode panel context; it also tests the moderating effects of time-in-panel, response history, and mode protocol. Results show that the framing of the survey participation request influences participation propensity in a way consistent with prospect theory, but only for relatively recent panel entrants. The opposite effect is found for long-term panel participants. No difference is found between mode protocols.

Published in

Public Opinion Quarterly

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfz030

ISSN

16

Subjects

Psychology and Survey Methodology

Notes

Online Early; Open Access; © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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