Impact of Reward Type on Survey Response Rate and Quality

摘要

In an age of increasing consumer reluctance to answer online surveys, survey panels are resorting to offer various kinds of rewards to attract customers to answer surveys. Although there is extensive research on the effects of rewards on response rates in traditional mail surveys, there is limited research on the effects of rewards in online mobile surveys. This study attempts to address the gap in literature by comparing the response rate and response quality of five different reward types offered to online survey respondents, including monetary and nonmonetary rewards. The results indicate that offering instantly redeemable small cash rewards on popular ecommerce websites yields the highest response rate. In terms of response quality, all reward groups, barring the "points" group, yielded good quality responses.