Paying for answers: How survey panels manage the commodification of the survey response

Today most survey respondents receive money as a reward for completing a survey. Online access panels often exchange access to their respondents for cash from other panels. In other words, the survey response has become commodified. Classic sociological theory holds that commodification brings widespread negative consequences. More recent economic sociology emphasizes that participants in money transactions can preserve desirable relationship qualities by doing “relational work.” For example, monetary rewards may be labelled as ‘gifts’ to obfuscate the respondent’s status as a paid worker. Drawing on concepts from the discipline of sociology, this article examines the relational work that panels perform. A sample of 28 active survey panels of three types—probability panels, mediated opt-in panels and direct exchange panels—is coded on the priority they give to monetary versus non-monetary rewards. They differ in how much they emphasize cash rewards, suggesting that higher quality survey panels succeed in part due to the relational work that they perform.