When More Gets You Less: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Concurrent Web Options on Mail Survey Response Rates

Researchers offer concurrent Web options in mail surveys in hopes of improving response rates. However, existing literature reports mixed effects of doing so. This paper utilizes meta-analytic methods to evaluate the effect that offering a concurrent Web option in a mail survey has on the response rate. Across nineteen experimental comparisons, we find that mail surveys that incorporate a concurrent Web option have significantly lower response rates than those that do not. We propose several explanations for this result: adding a mode option may increase the complexity of responding, selecting the Web option could cause a break in the response process, or attempting to respond online may result in implementation failure. We also find that study characteristics, such as offering an incentive, have little influence on the magnitude of this effect.