The effectiveness of incentives for research participation: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

In conclusion, our meta-analysis demonstrated statistically significant increases in the rate of consent and responses from participants when offered even small monetary value incentives. These findings suggest that incentives may be used to reduce the rate of recruitment failure and subsequent study termination. However, further RCTs are needed to establish a critical threshold beyond which incentive amount does not alter response rates further and the types of RCTs in which financial incentives are likely to be effective.