Much of the American labor force spends time in "private governments" over which they have little say during and beyond the work day. Do Americans prefer to work for businesses that look more like democracies or autocracies? We study this question using conjoint experimental techniques on a nationally representative sample of Americans. This design allows us to vary a large number of features of the workplace--especially their governance structures and the degree to which these structures allow for meaningful democratic decision-making. We hypothesize that workers should have a preference for democratic corporate governance structures such as employee ownership, co-determination, and the direct election of management. We find strong support that Americans have a preference for workplace democratization and that the magnitude is economically significant. Overall, this article marshals new data and analyses to better understand public preferences over "corporate regime type."

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Scholars have long noted the marked advantages of panel surveys for understanding the nature and causes of shifts in public opinion. Despite these advantages, existing panel survey approaches are often regarded as prohibitively costly or unrepresentative. In this paper, we present new evidence on best practices for an emerging panel survey approach: recruiting online panels by mail from defined sampling frames. We present results from 12 original such panel studies involving over 1 million individuals in total. Each of these panels contained randomized experiments on incentive levels, survey framing, and other features. These experiments allow us to present new recommendations about how to recruit panels using this mode that are more representative and more cost effective. We conclude by discussing limitations of our findings and their implications for other survey modes.

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