发送多个预付费激励是否有效？来自随机实验的证据

Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C.ISSN 1936-2854 (Print)ISSN 2767-3898 (Online) Does it Pay to Send Multiple Pre-Paid Incentives? Evidence froma Randomized Experiment Andrew C. Chang, Joanne W. Hsu, Eva Ma, Kate Bachtell, and Micah Sjoblom 2024-023 Please cite this paper as:Chang, Andrew C., Joanne W. Hsu, Eva Ma, Kate Bachtell, and Micah Sjoblom (2024).“Does it Pay to Send Multiple Pre-Paid Incentives? Evidence from a Randomized Experi-ment,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-023. Washington: Board of Governorsof the Federal Reserve System, https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2024.023. NOTE: Staff working papers in the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) are preliminarymaterials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment.The analysis and conclusions set forthare those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staff or theBoard of Governors. References in publications to the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (other thanacknowledgement) should be cleared with the author(s) to protect the tentative character of these papers. Does it Pay to Send Multiple Pre-Paid Incentives? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment April 15, 2024 Andrew C. Chang,*Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,andrew.c.chang@frb.govJoanne W. Hsu,†University of Michigan,jwhsu@umich.eduEva Ma, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,eva.ma@frb.govKate Bachtell, NORC at the University of Chicago,bachtell-kate@norc.orgMicah Sjoblom, NORC at the University of Chicago,sjoblom-micah@norc.org Abstract To encourage survey participation and improve sample representativeness, the Survey ofConsumer Finances (SCF) offers an unconditional pre-paid monetary incentive and separatepost-paid incentive upon survey completion. We conducted a pre-registered between-subjectrandomized control experiment within the 2022 SCF, with at least 1,200 households perexperimental group, to examine whether changing the pre-paid incentive structure affects surveyoutcomes. We assess the effects of: (1) altering the total dollar value of the pre-paid incentive(“incentive effect”), (2) giving two identical pre-paid incentives holding the total dollar valuefixed (“reminder effect”), and (3) offering multiple pre-paid incentives of different amountsholding the total dollar value fixed (“slope effect”) on survey response rates, interviewer burden,and data quality. Our evidence indicates that a single $15 pre-paid incentive increases responserates and maintains similar levels of interviewer burden and data quality, relative to a single $5pre-paid incentive. Splitting the $15 into two pre-paid incentives of different amounts increasesinterviewer burden though lengthening time in the field without improving response rates,reducing the number of contact attempts needed for a response, or improving data quality,regardless of whether the first pre-paid is larger or smaller than the second. Keywords:pre-paid incentives; unconditional incentives; sequential incentives; response rates;surveys; data quality; household financeJEL Codes:C83; C93; G5 *: ORCID 0000-0002-9769-789X.†: ORCID 0000-0002-0715-6230. The analysis and conclusions set forth arethose of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the Board of Governors of the FederalReserve System, its research staff, or theNORC at the University of Chicago. We thank Cathy Haggerty,Michael Kalmar, Katherine McGonagle, Kevin B. Moore, Heather Sawyer, Alice Henriques Volz, and conferenceparticipants at the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings for comments and help with this project. Our pre-registration planis on the Open Science Framework under “2022 SCF Pre-paid Incentives Experiment” athttps://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BXJNE. This experiment was approved by the Internal Review Board of theNORC at the University of Chicagounder protocol ID #21-08-433. Introduction An increasingly challenging environment for recruiting participants for surveys poses many risksfor researchers who need to balance achieving representative samples and maintaining dataquality with controlling financial costs and time in the field. Incentives, including pre-paidincentives, which are unconditional on survey completion, are one important tool to encouragesurvey response. While surveys typically employ a single pre-paid incentive, during datacollection pre-paid incentives can be structured in a variety of ways. The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF),1sponsored by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB),began employing pre-notification postcards followed by a pre-paid incentive of five dollars cashwith invitation letters for the 2016 wave, based on findings from Hsu, Schmeiser, Haggerty, andNelson (2017). To explore how changes in the structure of respondent incentives could improveresponse rates, duration in the field, and data quality we embedded an 8 week field experimentwithin the 2022 SCF. We randomly assigned respondents across 6 groups wit