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Paying research participants: how much is too much?

Exchanging payment of some form, whether monetary or otherwise, for

research participation is extremely common in modern scientific research
but does raise a number of ethical and practical issues. Among these
issues is the concern that offering payment to participants can comprise a
form of undue influence on potential participants decisions, as well as the
concern regarding whether the offer of payment can blind participants to
the risks of a study (Grant and Sugarman, 2004). The main issue with paid
participation in research studies is how payments affect informed consent,
as this is one of the central understandings of an ethical research project:
if payment has the potential to exert an influence over someones ability
to understand a project and/or their decision to participate in the study
then it becomes a serious problem. There are numerous ways to consider
the issue of paid participation from various perspectives, and of the
ethical standpoints used to analyse the problem two of the most
important are utilitarianism and deontological ethics.

The utilitarian and deontological views on paid participation are fairly

complex and will thus require some explanation. After outlining the two
ethical systems, I will move on to two research studies by Cryder et al
(Cryder, London, Volpp & Loewenstein, 2010) and Laguilles et al (Laguilles,
Saunders and Williams, 2010) that attempted to investigate the effects of
paid participation, as these studies provide a good basis to work from
when discussing utilitarianism and deontology with regards to empirical,
psychological research. Naturally, then, as well as describing the articles
by Cryder and Laguilles I will also discuss them from utilitarian and
deontological perspectives. The central aim of this discussion of ethical
systems and research studies is to demonstrate how complex the issue of
paid participation in psychological research is as well as to understand
how utilitarians and deontologists perceive the strengths of paid
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participation as well as its limits including the point at which the

payment becomes too much and is excessive for both systems.

Utilitarianism has its roots in the hedonistic beliefs of Greek thinkers such
as the Epicureans, but it was fully developed much later by Jeremy
Bentham and John Stewart Mill (Hillner, 2000). As a form of
consequentialist ethics, utilitarianism is concerned only with the results of
our actions and not with our intentions, as consequences are the
measurable outcomes of intentions and actions and so are the only way to
analyse our actions to see whether the effects they cause are ethically
positive or negative (Israel and Hay, 2006). The specific way of analysing
an action that is used by utilitarians is to examine the overall pleasure
brought about by that action as well as the suffering caused and to judge
the action as morally good if the pleasure outweighs the suffering (Israel
and Hay, 2006). All utilitarians focus on performing actions that should
bring about the greatest total pleasure which can be concentrated or
spread out between large numbers of people although many utilitarians
stress the need to minimise suffering as far as possible before concerning
yourself with maximising pleasure, and put the focus on reducing suffering
before spreading happiness (Israel and Hay, 2006). This core belief of
maximising pleasure and minimising suffering is known as the principle of
utility. As they believe that pleasure is the only moral good, utilitarians are
unconcerned with rights and duties that conflict with bringing about the
most pleasurable outcomes for as many people as possible (Hillner, 2000).
Although there are many variations of utilitarianism, the key principles
judging actions ethically by analysing their consequences, focusing on
pleasure as the only inherently good outcome, and attempting to
maximise pleasure whilst minimising suffering remain much the same
for most utilitarians (Francis, 2009).

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The utilitarian approach to paid participation is relatively straightforward,

though there are issues with how to define exactly how to apply
utilitarianism to specific elements of the problem. The central issue with
paid participation, namely the potential for interfering with informed
consent, is of relatively little importance to utilitarians: the duty to obtain
informed consent is not a utilitarian concept and as such utilitarians will
focus on the outcome of paying participants and not the violation of any
particular responsibilities beyond trying to maximise pleasure and
minimise pain (Hillner, 2000). The researchers duties of non-maleficence
and beneficence reducing the suffering of and promoting the pleasure of
participants respectively are important to utilitarians, but informed
consent is important only if it does increase participant happiness and
reduce suffering.

As a result, utilitarianism has no qualms about using payments as

incentives to attract research participants, particularly as getting sufficient
participants to make a study as scientifically valid as possible can often be
difficult without using some form of incentive. If the money paid to
participants makes the study more valid then the study can be of more
use to future research, thereby increasing pleasure by contributing to
positive scientific advances as well as by making participants happier by
paying them (Israel and Hay, 2006). However, utilitarianism would still be
concerned with the risk of jeopardising the validity of a study by paying its
participants too well: offering high payments in exchange for participation
will attract money-oriented participants who are far more interested in
receiving payment than in taking part and following instructions correctly,
which can strongly skew the end result and render the study as far less
useful than it would have otherwise been (Francis, 2009; Bentley and
Thacker, 2004). As a study that is not useful in any kind of beneficial way
will produce relatively little pleasure, utilitarian researchers would limit
payments offered to participants to prevent such an effect from taking
place. Utilitarians would also limit the size of payments based on the
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expected significance of the study in question: a study that is likely to

have extremely important and useful results should bring far more
pleasure than a study that is less likely to have such positive
consequences, and so resources would be allocated with the most
promising and important studies receiving the largest share (Israel and
Hay, 2006), which would subsequently dictate the size of payments
offered to participants in different studies. In general, utilitarian
researchers seek to find the optimal balance between motivating
sufficient participants to make a study successful and not allocating a
study more resources for its payments than its projected significance
deserves.

Utilitarian attitudes play a key role in psychological research for

example, undertaking a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether a
study is likely to have a more positive than negative effect overall is a
standard research procedure (Israel and Hay, 2006) and clearly relates
very closely to the principle of utility and deontological ethical views are
similarly important to researchers, and as such will now be discussed.

Whereas utilitarianism concerns itself entirely with the consequences of

our actions, deontological ethics is non-consequentialist and focuses
instead on our intentions: deontological ethics is specifically about
believing in duties that people should perform in order to behave in a
positive moral way (Hillner, 2000). Immanuel Kant is considered to be a
quintessential deontological ethical theorist (Hillner, 2000) and his code of
ethics will be used here as an example of deontological ethics, though the
fact that not all deontologists necessarily believe in all of the different
elements of Kants theories should be borne in mind. Whilst utilitarianism
views pleasure as the only intrinsic good, Kant argued that the only
natural good was a persons rational goodwill: pleasure is irrelevant to
morality, as ethical behaviour is achieved by going against desire and
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following the moral laws and duties derived from our rational moral will
(Hillner, 2000). Kantian duties regard either actions that must not be
taken (duties of perfect obligation) or actions that can be taken to act
morally (duties of imperfect obligation), and when duties conflict those of
perfect obligation take priority certain duties are also prioritised due to
being what Kant called prima facie duties (Hillner, 2000). Kants other
concepts include the principle of universalizability, which states that an
action should only be taken if the underlying maxim of that action could
be made into a universal rule without causing any contradictions or
untenable situations (Hillner, 2000), and the treatment of other people not
just as a means to an end but also as an independent and autonomous
end in themselves (Francis, 2009). Although not all deontologists would
attempt to theoretically universalise their actions the majority would
certainly agree on the importance of duties and on the treatment of other
people as autonomous agents that should be respected.

When applied to paid participation in research situations, deontological

ethics is not entirely clear. The researcher has a duty to their participants
to not take advantage or manipulate their decision to participate or their
actions during the study, and so informed and continued consent is
extremely important (Israel and Hay, 2006) and therefore the issue of
payments acting as an undue inducement is a critical one for deontologist
researchers. An undue inducement can be characterised as something
which persuades potential participants to act against their principles
and/or their better judgement and to do something to which they would
normally be strongly averse (Grant and Sugarman, 2004). Kant and other
deontologists would certainly be concerned with ensuring that researchers
were not manipulating their participants and that those that did
participate made the free choice to do so, but there is no clearly-defined
way to deciding how to limit payments from a deontological perspective.
Researchers could have a duty to simply recompense participants for the
monetary costs inherent in participating, or their duty might be to pay
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them for their time and effort. At a basic level, researchers should have
the duty to repay their participants for the money spent as a result of the
study (e.g. parking and travel costs) and should certainly not devise a
payment system that tries to influence potential participants into acting
against their principles or that treats participants unfairly by paying them
on an unfair basis.

Now that the general views of utilitarianism and deontological ethics on

paid participation have been discussed, the articles by Cryder et al and
Laguilles et al will be outlined in terms of their hypotheses, their research
experiments, their results and their conclusions about paid participation
so that they can then in turn be explored and analysed from utilitarian and
deontological perspectives. The Cryder article will be discussed first,
followed by the Laguilles article.

The article by Cryder et al examines the issue of influencing risk

perception when paying participants: the researchers argue that
participants naturally associate the level of payment offered with the level
of risk involved in participation, and as such expect high risks when large
payments are offered and low risks when payments are less substantial
(Cryder et al, 2010). The researchers hypothesised that higher
participation payments will increase perceived risk and that participants
will spend more time examining information on possible risks as a result
(Cryder et al, 2010). The first experiment revealed that participants that
were offered a higher monetary incentive rated the experiment presented
to them as significantly riskier individually and in comparison to other
risky events with similar results for participants from a variety of income
levels (Cryder et al, 2010). The second experiment showed that increasing
payments increased participants willingness to sign up and the time they
spent reading information on potential risks before attempting to join the
proposed study (Cryder et al, 2010). The third and final experiment
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demonstrated that making the implicit link between payment and risk
explicit greatly increased perceived risk for participants of all levels of
education and income (Cryder et al, 2010). Overall, Cryder and her
colleagues concluded that payments for participation act as incentives
and as cautionary warnings to participants about the level of risk inherent
in the study, making participants more likely to both participate and to
spend more time considering risks when payments are high as opposed to
when they are low or non-existent: the researchers suggested that the
results suggest that worries about paid participation influencing consent
unduly should be relaxed (Cryder et al, 2010).

From a utilitarian perspective, these experiments have both positive and

negative implications. The clear link between perceived risk and payment
level is troubling as utilitarians do not usually consider risk to be
significant when deciding on the level of payment though one factor in
offering payments could be to minimise participant unhappiness due to
unpleasant conditions, maximising happiness requires more of a focus on
the overall outcome of the experiment and how it can help the population
and thus they might offer a high payment when risk is relatively low or
offer a low payment for a risky experiment, either of which might worry
participants or otherwise cause them to feel unhappy. However,
utilitarians would be pleased that payments were shown to have had a
significant incentive effect as it reinforces the arguments for their use as a
way to acquire participants for important studies. Deontological ethicists
would be less interested in the incentive effect, but the perceived link
between risk and payment level would be extremely important: if
participants actually pay more attention to the risks involved in a study
when large payments are offered then it would seem that participants of
different education and income levels remain aware of potential risks and
make their decision after considering the risks involved despite the offer
of large payments (Cryder et al, 2010). This greatly reduces the likelihood
that payments will act as a way of blinding potential participants to the
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risks of a study, thus allowing people to make their own decisions and
researchers to respect their participants autonomy to a greater degree.
Although deontologists do not necessarily believe that payment level
should be linked to risk some ethicists actually argue that payments
should be universalised regardless of risk to avoid undue inducement
(Dickert and Grady, 1999) the perceived link between risk and payment
should at least ensure that participants remain wary of risk even in the
face of monetary offers, and although ultimately Cryders study showed
that high payments acted as an incentive to participants at least the
participants reinforced risk awareness suggests that they made the
decision to participate relatively free of undue inducement (though the
influencing effect of the payment as an incentive remains).

Laguilles, Saunders and Williams elected to investigate the efficacy of

lottery-based incentives when conducting web-based surveys, on the
basis that lottery incentives are frequently used by higher-educationbased surveys despite a lack of statistical evidence for their ability to
attract participants (Laguilles et al, 2010). Laguilles and his colleagues
predicted that participants would be more likely to agree to participate in
hypothetical web-based studies if they were offered a lottery incentive,
and this prediction was correct: participants offered a lottery incentive
were significantly more likely to agree to participate in all four proposed
web-based studies, with increases in participation due to an offered
incentive ranging from 5% to 10% (Laguilles et al, 2010). The researchers
also found that the different lottery payments offered produced different
response rates and had different effects on male and female participants,
and concluded that different lottery incentives interest some groups more
than others because of their relevance and salience to them, in
accordance with leverage-salience theory, and that this information could
be used to tailor lottery incentives to attract members of particular
populations that are usually under-represented in surveys (Laguilles et al,
2010).
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Utilitarian views on Laguilles study should be fairly positive: it is often

difficult to attract sufficient participants to make survey studies
statistically valid, as noted in the article (Laguilles et al, 2010), and the
study demonstrates that lottery incentives are an effective way of
significantly improving participation, which should thereby improve the
validity of web-based surveys and the positive effect that they can have
on research and the population at large. The study also presents a way to
attract under-represented groups into participating in research by tailoring
lottery incentives to make them as salient as possible, and utilitarians
would certainly approve of using this measure: by persuading underrepresented groups such as males and ethnic minorities to participate in
general population surveys, said surveys will become more representative
and thus far more valuable in producing valid scientific information and,
hopefully, happiness for those who benefit from the research.

On the other hand, deontologists would concerned with using lottery

incentives in this way: payments should be paid as part of a researchers
duty to repay participants for their time and should not be used to try to
significantly influence potential participants decision to join the study
(Francis, 2009). Arguably, deontologists might also have an issue with
lottery-based incentives, as they do not pay all participants an equal
amount indeed, an expensive prize such as the iPod Nano offered in
Laguilles study would lead to a large equality gap in terms of participant
payment but it could also be argued that a researchers duty to treat
participants equally is still satisfied when payment is offered in the form of
a potential prize, so long as all participants accept and understand what
their chance of actually winning is. The main issue that deontologists
would have is that the study advocates using payments to incentivise
participation, as payments should instead be given as a duty without
hopes for the consequences of the payment.

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As the discussion throughout this essay should indicate, there are many
differences between deontologist and utilitarian views on paid
participation in research studies that result from their relative
prioritisation of duty and pleasure as the focus of ethical behaviour for
researchers as well as for everyone else. In practice, deontological ethics
sets out the standard requirements for research: researchers do have
certain duties to participants that they must strive to fulfil such as those
set out in the Belmont report (Grant and Sugarman, 2004). Utilitarianism
then argues that when these duties are fulfilled researchers should also
endeavour to make their research as scientifically valid and productive as
possible.

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References
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Bentley, J. P. and Thacker, P. G. (2004). The influence of risk and

monetary payment on the research participation decision making

process. Journal of Medical Ethics, 30, 293-298.

Cryder, C. E., London, A. J., Volpp, K. G., and Loewenstein, G. (2010).
Informative inducement: Study payment as a signal of risk. Social

Science & Medicine, 70,

455-464.
Dickert, N. and Grady, C. (1999). Whats the Price of a Research
Subject? Approaches to Payment for Research Participation. The

New England Journal of Medicine, 341 (3), 198-203.

Francis, R. D. (2009). Ethics for Psychologists (2nd ed.). Chichester:

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Grant, R. W. and Sugarman, J. (2004). Ethics in Human Subjects
Research: Do Incentives Matter? Journal of Medicine and Philosophy,

29 (6), 717-738.
Hillner, K. (2000). Metaphysics: Contentual ethical issues. In Hillner,
K., A Psychological Approach to Ethical Reality. Advances in

Psychology, 132, 121-157.

Israel, M., and Hay, I. (2006). Research Ethics for Social Scientists.

London: Sage.
Laguilles, J. S., Saunders, D. B., and Williams, E. A. (2010). Can
Lottery Incentives Boost Web Survey Response Rates? Findings from
Four Experiments. Source Research in Higher Education, 52, 537553.

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