The Early Bird Catches the Worm! Setting a Deadline for Online Panel Recruitment Incentives

Abstract

The literature on the effects of incentives in survey research is vast and covers a diversity of survey modes. The mode of probability-based online panels, however, is still young and so is research into how to best recruit sample units into the panel. This paper sheds light on the effectiveness of a specific type of incentive in this context: a monetary incentive that is paid conditionally upon panel registration within two weeks of receiving the initial postal mail invitation. We tested early bird cash incentives in a large-scale recruitment experiment for the German Internet Panel (GIP) in 2018. We find that panel response rates are significantly higher when offering early bird cash incentives and that fieldwork progresses considerably faster, leading to fewer reminders and greater cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, sample representativeness is similarly high with or without early bird incentives.

Recruitment Capabilities and Attractive Compensation in Supporting of the Employee Retention Paradigm

“…On the online recruitment indicator, where the informants use this policy are MS BTI and LS MVN informants, that the online recruiting factor is the best thing for the company from the two informants, namely "In looking for candidates, BS uses social media to reach out to potential candidates in line with the trends of the world of recruitment." And "assessment, which was originally done face-to-face (offline), was transferred to an online system" (Chen, 2022;Friedel, 2022;Hoffmann, 2022;Huang, 2022;Li, 2022). The two informants say the use of this policy will support the company in being good.…”