Abstract
Increasing mail-survey response using monetary incentives is a proven, but not always cost-effective method in every population. This paper tackles the questions of whether it is worth using monetary incentives and the size of the inducement by testing a logit model of the impact of prepaid monetary incentives on response rates in consumer and organizational mail surveys. The results support their use and show that the inducement value makes a significant impact on the effect size. Importantly, no significant differences were found between consumer and organizational populations. A cost–benefit model is developed to estimate the optimum incentive when attempting to minimize overall survey costs for a given sample size.
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Saunders, J., Jobber, D. & Mitchell, V. The optimum prepaid monetary incentives for mail surveys. J Oper Res Soc 57, 1224–1230 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602053
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602053