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Category: Project

Description: Participation in public health research is crucial for studying the factors that affect population health as well as evaluating interventions based on scientific evidence. However, recent studies indicate a decline in participation rates, leading to reduced confidence in research findings. Consequently, there is a growing interest in increasing the response rate in surveys. Insights from behavioral economics suggest that nudges can be effective in boosting survey participation. One such nudge is the decoy effect, where introducing a less desirable option in the choice set increases the likelihood of choosing the more attractive alternative. Although the variation in level of incentives as a decoy has not been specifically tested in the context of survey participation, a recent field experiment successfully employed a decoy questionnaire to enhance online survey participation. The proposed study aims to investigate whether the inclusion of a decoy incentive can lead to an improvement in survey response rates. Specifically, we will examine if providing individuals with the option to participate in the survey for a less convenient incentive increases the likelihood of accepting the standard survey offer. The proposed study consists of two stages. In the first stage (pilot study), participants will be recruited through social media platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp etc.) for a brief survey to collect email addresses and to assess their attitudes towards different incentives (e.g. amazon vouchers, donation of the reward to a charity, voucher of a less convenient store etc.). There will be two experiments conducted within this study. In the second stage (experiment), participants who provided their email addresses will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: 1) In the control condition, respondents will receive the standard invitation email to participate in the survey with an incentive of £2 as Amazon voucher, 2) In the decoy condition, a decoy option is added alongside the standard invitation. The standard invitation is same as the control condition. In experiment 1, the decoy option will be a less convenient voucher of £2 value while in experiment 2, the decoy condition will be a donation of £2 to charity. The exact decoy options for the two experiments will be determined in the preliminary survey where the participants will be asked to rank the possible incentives and the least desirable option will be selected as the decoy. The surveys in all conditions will be identical and utilize a validated fear of coronavirus questionnaire. This study would be among the first to examine the impact of decoy incentives on survey response rates. The findings could have practical implications like the potential use of decoy incentives to improve response rates in survey-based research. Moreover, if a positive decoy effect is observed, future studies could explore different types of financial incentives as decoys and compare their efficacy.