Does the Payment of Incentives Create Expectation Effects?

Increasing use of incentive payments to survey respondents raises the threat of several unintended consequences, among them the creation of expectations for future payments und the possibility of a deterioration in the quality of response. The findings fiom the present study are somewhat reassuring with respect to both of these unintended outcomes. Although people who have received a monetary incentive in the past are significantly more likely to agree that "beople should be paid for doing surveys like this"', they are also more likely to participate in a subsequent survey, in spite of receiving no further payments. And respondents who received an incentive six months earlier are no more likely than those who received no incentive to refuse to answer (or to answer Don? Know to) a series of eighteen key questions on the survey. Furthermore, they are more likely than other respondents to express favorable attitudes toward the usefulness of "surveys like thisf'. The generality of these findings, however, needs much further testing.