Compassion or Cash: Evaluating Survey Response Incentives and Valuing Public Goods

V. Kerry Smith; Sharon L. Harlan; Michael McLaen; Jacob Fishman; Carlos Valcarcel; Marcia Nation

doi:10.3386/w21288

Compassion or Cash: Evaluating Survey Response Incentives and Valuing Public Goods

V. Kerry Smith, Sharon L. Harlan, Michael McLaen, Jacob Fishman, Carlos Valcarcel & Marcia Nation

Working Paper 21288

DOI 10.3386/w21288

Issue Date June 2015

This paper reports the results of an experiment evaluating the effects of incentives on individuals' willingness to participate in a survey. By pairing the assessment with a natural field experiment, the analysis considers private versus public goods as incentives, and estimates respondents' willingness to support the oldest food bank in the U.S.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number BCS-1026865, Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER). Thanks are due to Shauna Mortensen for assistance in preparing this manuscript. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Marcia Nation
The Phoenix Area Social Survey was funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research program, BCS-1026865.
Copy Citation

V. Kerry Smith, Sharon L. Harlan, Michael McLaen, Jacob Fishman, Carlos Valcarcel, and Marcia Nation, "Compassion or Cash: Evaluating Survey Response Incentives and Valuing Public Goods," NBER Working Paper 21288 (2015), https://doi.org/10.3386/w21288.
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Compassion or Cash: Evaluating Survey Response Incentives and Valuing Public Goods

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