Monetary Inducements and
Mail Questionnaire Response
THOMAS R. WOTRUBA *
> Nonresponse and incomplete response are two mail questionnaire problems. This article
describes how two different monetary inducements meet these problems, as compared
with no inducement.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects
of two types of monetary inducements, as well as no
inducement, on the percentage and completeness of re-
sponse to a mail questionnaire. The study was carried
out as a pretest to a major mail questionnaire sampling
study requiring 750 completed returns from urban
household residents.
BACKGROUND
The study was needed for three reasons: First, the
results of previous studies on this subject might have
lost significance over time. Second, evidence from pre-
vious studies was somewhat conflicting and incomplete.
Third, the completeness of responses from various in-
ducements was neglected in the literature but was im-
portant in most mail questionnaire studies. These rea-
sons are discussed further below.
Previous significant studies on this subject were pre-
sented in 1948 [1], 1951 [5], 1958 [3], 1960 [2], 1961
[4], and 1965 [7]. If the monetary aspect of the induce-
ment was most important, it was possible that some
specific amount, say 25 cents, was no longer regarded as
valuable as it was even a few years ago, and, thus, was
not as effective in evoking responses. If, on the other
hand, the importance of the inducement came from
its psychological effect on the respondent.' the possible
decline in real value of the money might have been far
less important.
Although most previous studies' conclusions on the
effectiveness of 25 cents as a minimum amount were
consistent, one study concluded differently [4]. Further,
little evidence was generally available on the effective-
ness of promising a monetary reward for a completed
response." Since such an approach might be considerably
* Thomas R. Wotruba is associate professor of marketing,
San Diego State College. The author wishes to acknowledge
Richard D. Darley Associates who provided the opportunity to
do this study, and H. Christine Boland and Robert W. Wilbur
for their assistance.
1 This psychological effect is discussed in [5, p. 420].
• The only discussion of this point is found in [6, p. 177],
in which a promised reward of 25¢ provided little improvement
in response rate when compared with no reward.
398
less expensive, depending on the rate of return from
various alternatives, the promised reward was chosen
as one alternative in the present study.
Finally, no major evidence was found which showed
how different types of inducements affected complete-
ness of responses. Since the major study questionnaire
contained over 100 questions including scales, rankings,
and a few open questions, and many cross-tabulations
were planned, responses had to be reasonably complete
to be of much value. Certainly a high rate of response
is a weak justification for recommending an inducement
if the responses are incomplete.
THE PRESENT STUDY
These pretest samples were chosen from the popula-
tion which was eventually to be sent the major question-
naire mailing. One hundred and fifty names were
chosen by a random process, and divided systematically
into three groups of 50 names each.
The members of the first group were sent a quarter
(25¢) with a cover letter and the questionnaire. The
second group received the same cover letter except that
it promised 50¢ to everyone who responded with a
completed questionnaire. The third group received a
cover letter with no promise and no inducement. Six
weeks were allowed to ensure that all possible returns
were in. The questionnaire was sent by first-class mail
to allow for returns in case the addressee could not be
reached; actually none was returned and no follow-ups
were sent.
RESULTS
There were 20 responses from the first group, 10
from the second, and 9 from the third. The difference
in response percentages between the first and second
groups was significant at the 3 percent level. No sig-
nificant difference occurred between the response per-
centages in the second and third groups.
There were also differences in the completeness of
responses received. When over half the total number of
questions were not answered, the response was con-
Journal of Marketing Research,
Vol. III (November 1966),398-400
MONETARY INDUCEMENTS AND MAIL QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSE 399

COMPARISON OF MAJOR STUDY COSTS USING DIFFERENT INDUCEMENTS

25¢ sent 50¢ promised No inducement

Expected percent response 40 20 18

Necessary to mail 1875 3750 4167
Costs:
Postage out (@ 5¢) $93.75 $187.50 $208.35
Materials, printing, addressing, stuffing (est. @ 15¢) 281.25 562.50 625.05
Return postage (750 @ 7¢) 52.50 52.50 52.50
Inducement 469.00 412.50 0.00
(25¢ X 1875) (50¢ + 5¢ postage X 750)

Total costs without considering completeness $896.50 $1,215.00 $885.90

Percentage of incomplete replies 5 30 22
Additional necessary to mail- 94 1125 917
(1875 X .05) (3750 X .30) (4167 X .22)
Costs:
Postage out (@ 5¢) $3.70 $56.25 $45.85
Materials, etc. (est. @ 15¢) 14.10 168.75 137.55
Return postage 2.66 15.75 11.55
(38 X 7¢) (225 X 7¢) (165 X 7¢)
Inducement 23.50 123.75 b 0.00

Total costs for additional completed responses $44.96 $364.50 $194.95

Total costs for all completed responses $941.46 $1,579.50 $1,080.85
a Does not consider that an equivalent percentage of these will be incomplete.
b Would not be included if no reward were sent to original respondents whose returned questionnaire was incomplete.

sidered to be incomplete. The first group produced the
lowest percentage of incomplete replies, which was 5
percent (1 out of 20). The second group produced 30
percent incomplete replies (3 out of 10), and the third
group's replies were 22 percent incomplete (2 out of 9).
The difference between the percentage of incomplete
replies in the first and second groups was nearly sig-
nificant at the 5 percent level.
ANALYSIS
Since the major study required 750 completed re-
sponses for the desired degree of precision, the following
analysis was performed to determine which of these
three approaches should be used. Using response per-
centages from the pretest study as the best estimate of
percentage response in the major study, it was deter-
mined that 1,875 questionnaires would have to be
mailed if the 25¢ inducement were used, 3,750 question-
naires would have to be mailed if the promise of 50¢
inducement were used, and 4,167 questionnaires would
have to be mailed if no inducement were used. After
determining or estimating other costs pertinent to the
mailing, a cost comparison of each of the three ap-
proaches was computed, and appears in the table. The
top of the table does' not take into consideration the
completeness of responses, but only the total number.
The bottom of the table indicates the additional costs
covering additional questionnaires needed to provide
the desired number of complete replies. The results
show that the approach using the 25¢ inducement
would incur the least expense when completeness of
responses is important to the study.
Three further points should be noted. First, the total
cost differences between the inducement approaches
became greater as the cost per questionnaire sent in-
creased. For example, the cost of materials, printing,
etc., was estimated at 15¢ per questionnaire. If a
higher cost were really correct, especially when consider-
able labor and special printing costs were necessary, the
total cost difference between the 25¢ and the two other
approaches would be greater. This was true because the
other two approaches required sending a greater number
of questionnaires than did the 25¢ approach. A similar
result occurred if postage costs of sending out the
questionnaire were higher than the 5¢ used here.
Conversely, if any of these costs declined, there was a
point at which no inducement became the least costly
of the three approaches.
The second point concerns why the 25¢ inducement
produced more complete responses. This seems to give
weight to the argument that the inducement had greater
psychological rather than monetary motivation. It
would seem that if respondents viewed this situation in
only an economic sense, there should be more complete
and a greater rate of responses with a higher induce-
ment. From these data, however, it seems more likely
that respondents who received the inducement before
replying not only felt obligated to return their question-
naire, but felt obligated to do a better job in filling out
their responses. Perhaps it could be concluded that the
immediacy of the inducement was more important than
its amount when the amount was not unreasonably
small, such as 1 or 5¢.
Finally, it is possible that various types of induce-
400
ments affect in different ways the importance of other
factors which influences the response rate. Such factors
as the length and difficulty of the questionnaire, the
nature of the population being sampled, and its interest
in the subject affected the response rate. An immediate
inducement might counteract negative factors of length
and difficulty and reinforce any positive factors, such as
interest, more than would the delayed inducement. Such
i.nteractions were not studied, however. In addition, dif-
ferent types of inducements might produce different
types of bias by influencing different kinds of people
to respond, although no bias was obviously apparent in
this study when the demographic characteristics in the
three response groups were compared.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Previous work on this subject has probably not lost
much value because of the passage of time. The psycho-
logical value of an immediate inducement seemed to be
stronger than the larger monetary value of a delayed in-
ducement, as long as the immediate inducement was not
unreasonably small.
2. Promise of a reward in return for a completed re-
sponse produced no significant difference from the no in-
ducement approach.
3. When completeness of response was considered, the
desired number of responses was obtained at least-total cost
using the 25¢ inducement. However, if completeness were
JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, NOVEMBER 1966
disregarded, the no inducement approach was least expen-
sive. Further, the differences in total cost among the
various approaches could change, depending on the amount
of cost per questionnaire mailed.
4. Validity of this study was supported when the major
questionnaire mailing, using the 25¢ inducement, produced
a response rate of 40.7 percent, with the percentage of
incomplete replies being even less than the 5 percent in
the pretest.
REFERENCES
1. J. C. Bevis, "Economic Incentives Used for Mail Ques-
tionnaires," Public Opinion Quarterly, 12 (Fall 1948), 492-
3.
2. L. R. Frankel, "How Incentives and Subsamples Affect the
Precision of Mail Surveys," Journal of Advertising Research,
1 (September 1960), 1-5.
3. W. M. Kephart and Marvin Bressler, "Increasing the Re-
sponse to Mail Questionnaires: A Research Study," Public
Opinion Quarterly, 22 (Summer 1958), 123-32.
4. A. E. Kimball, "Increasing the Rate of Return in Mail
Surveys," Journal of Marketing, 25 (October 1961), 63-4.
5. R. A. Robinson and Phillip Agisim, "Making Mail Surveys
More Reliable," Journal of Marketing, 15 (April 1951), 415-
24.
6. Christopher Scott, "Research on Mail Surveys," Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 124 (Part 2, 1961),
143-95.
7. J. J. Watson, "Improving the Response Rate in Mail Re-
search," Journal of Advertising Research, 5 (June 1965),
48-50.