Monetary incentives are one approach for increasing response rates in contingent valuation surveys. We present the results of a case study desgined to assess the effect of incentives on response rates and respondent behavior. We compare response rates and quality of answers for five incentive...

Eighteen empirical studies from fourteen different researchers provide evidence that prepaid monetary incentives have a strong positive impact on the response rate in mail surveys. One of these studies is described here and an attempt is made to generalize from all eighteen about the...

Members of professional groups were much more likely to respond to a mail survey than nonmembers who were also experts in the area (43.7% versus 13.7%). A one-dollar (U.S.) prepaid monetary incentive increased the response rates, and it was as effective for members as for nonmembers (gains of...