Impact of the inclusion of an article as an incentive in industrial mail surveys

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to examine the effect of an enclosed nonmonetary incentive (in the form of either a trade or an academic article) and a promised incentive (in the form of an offer for a summary of the results) on response rate of industrial main surveys. The results indicated that neither of the above mentioned incentives or their interaction were found to have a positive effect on the overall response rate. Furthermore, the inclusion of an article with the mail out package has been found to have a negative effect (i.e. actually reduced response rate), while the offer for a summary of the results had no effect on response rate. This pattern was not evident in the first mail of the questionnaire and only became apparent in the second mail, something that may indicate a cumulative negative effect of the enclosed incentives.