Article ID: | iaor20072222 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 57 |
Issue: | 10 |
Start Page Number: | 1224 |
End Page Number: | 1230 |
Publication Date: | Oct 2006 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Saunders J., Jobber D., Mitchell V. |
Keywords: | cost benefit analysis |
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.