Can Lottery Incentives Boost Web Survey Response Rates? Findings from Four Experiments

Abstract

Institutions of higher education rely on student surveys for a number of purposes, including planning, assessment, and research. Web surveys are especially prevalent given their ease of use and low-cost; yet, obtaining a high response rate is a challenge. Although researchers have investigated the use of incentives in traditional mail surveys, studies investigating the impact of lottery incentives on web survey response rates are limited. In this study, four separate web survey experiments were conducted to measure the effectiveness of lottery-based incentives in a college student population in the United States. Findings reveal that the lottery incentives not only positively impacted response rates but also exerted differential effects by gender. The results have practical implications for higher education researchers who conduct web surveys of college students.

Response Rates in Business and Management Research: An Overview of Current Practice and Suggestions for Future Direction

“…Incentives are expected to lead to higher RR (Ansee et al, 2010; Baruch and Holtom, 2008; Biner, 1988; Fan and Yan, 2010;Kanuk and Berenson, 1975;Roth and BeVier, 1998;Laguilles et al, , 2011;Laurie and Lynn, 2009 percentage points increase in RR by a use of $1 incentive (see also Church, 1993;Yammarino et al, 1991). In contrast, some scholars cautioned that financial incentives could have the opposite effect.…”

Radiation Therapy Students′ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs about Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Cancer Patients

“…A good response rate was achieved in comparison with those in other self-administered Web-based questionnaire studies with undergraduate students [25], and a wave analysis reported that there was no nonresponse bias. The evaluation used both quantitative and qualitative data, which allowed the opportunity to collect richer, multifaceted qualitative data because of participants adding their own perspectives about the research topic.…”

“…Four follow-up reminders were sent to potential participants via e-mail. To increase the response rate, a lottery-based incentive was used [24][25][26][27]. Participants were given the option to enter to win a gift card by accessing a link to a second independent questionnaire to collect their name and e-mail address.…”

Comparison of Lottery Incentive Amount on Click-Through Rates and Online Survey Response Rates in a Member Association Population

“…In addition to Preece et al other investigators have worked to determine advantages regarding use of incentives in surveys including: the effects of incentive amount and conditional lottery incentives (Porter and Whitcomb 2003) or conditional incentives (DeCamp and Manierre 2016), prepaid incentive amounts and their relationship with demographic variables of the respondent (Szelenyi et al 2004), use of both pre-and post-paid incentives on response rate (Coopersmith et al 2016), the effects of conditional lottery incentives and gender on web survey response rates (Laguilles et al 2011), and even conditions where the use of survey incentives might be tantamount to coercion (Singer and Bossarte 2006).…”