Re: Incentives for User Participation

From Craig Wills
: My question is whether anyone has any experience or can point at any 
source about the effectiveness of feedback as an incentive?  More 
generally, what is known about the effectiveness of incentives (money, 
prizes, chances to win, others) in getting users to participate in 
online data gathering exercises such as surveys?

Survey methodologists study this problem a lot. I'd definitely 
recommend getting hold of Don Dillman's book on questionnaire design, 
which is not only excellent in its own right but also has good 
references to the rest of the literature.

In summary: your incentive needs to be percieved as an immediate 
reward by the respondent.

Let's unpick those words somewhat:

'Perceived': the respondent must believe that they'll actually get the 
reward and they much consider that it is of value to them.

'Immediate': the reward must happen right now. There's good quality 
research that says: an actual dollar today has a far better effect on 
response rate than the promise of a guaranteed $10 in two weeks' time. 
Entry in a prize draw has no effect on response rate - not guaranteed, 
and too far in the future.

'Reward': something of value. That can be a monetary value or a more 
general 'good feeling' such as a feeling of contributing to a 
community, or a non-financial value such as data. Being promised a set 
of findings or the report can work very well in professional 
communities. Rob Burnside of the Australian Bureau of Satistics 
published a study where merely supplying the URL of a free, helpful, 
industry-relevant report with the survey had a significant effect on 
response rates.

Money (or close equivalents such as Amazon vouchers) can work, but:
- it has to be guaranteed
- it has to be immediate
- the effort of converting the equivalent into something of value has 
to be seen as minimal (e.g. Amazon voucher OK, a voucher for an 
unknown store not nearly as desirable)
- you have to be careful about the amount compared to the usual 
remuneration of the respondent and the type of work that your 
organisation does etc. For example, I've know participants in 
usability testing for a major charity feeling most uncomfortable about 
accepting their cash incentive. The charity solves this by offering 
the participants the opportunity to donate back the incentive and 
about half  of the participants actually do so.

Best,

Caroline Jarrett
[email protected]
01525 370379

Effortmark Ltd
Usability - Forms - Content
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