Benefits of increasing the value of respondent incentives during the course of a longitudinal mixed-mode survey

Publication type

Journal Article

Series Number

Authors

Publication date

January 11, 2025

Summary:

This paper explores the effects of increasing the value of survey incentives on response rates and fieldwork efforts using data from a large-scale randomised experiment embedded in wave 12 of a national probability-based longitudinal survey. We also investigate whether effects differ between previous-wave respondents, who were sent an unconditional incentive, and previous wave non-respondents, who were offered a conditional incentive. The treatment group received £20 incentives instead of the usual £10 received at previous waves and by the control group. The results show a positive effect of the increased incentive on response rates for previous wave non-respondents and that this effect is heterogeneous across certain subgroups. The positive effect on response rates could translate into reduced fieldwork efforts in a web and CAPI sequential design.

Published in

International Journal of Social Research Methodology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2024.2443630

ISSN

13645579

Subjects

Notes

Online Early

Open Access

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

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 use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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