Improving Survey Response Rates with Incentives

When conducting surveys, one of the biggest problems organizations face is a low response rate. Your survey can follow all best practices — a well-defined goal, a clear target population, simple and straightforward questions — and still fall short of receiving a sufficient number of responses. So, the question becomes this: how can you encourage survey responses without jeopardizing the integrity of your results? To answer this question, we must first understand why participants complete surveys in the first place. It is generally understood that there are four
main reasons why participants respond to surveys:

1. Altruism – To be helpful to the researcher or society
2. Interest in the research topic
3. Perceived self-benefit – by responding , products or services will improve
4. Direct incentives