The effect of conditional incentives in an email–web valuation survey of recreational anglers

Abstract Web surveys often suffer from low response rates when invitations are sent via email. We conducted an experiment testing the effects of a $5 Starbucks gift card incentive on response rates and survey results from an email–web survey of Gulf of Mexico recreational anglers. Half the sample was randomly assigned to be offered the incentive for completion of the survey. Despite this, response rates were nearly identical between the incentivized (12 percent) and non-incentivized (13 percent) groups. Respondent demographics, fishing trip characteristics, and econometric estimates were highly consistent across groups. Statistical tests could not reject the null of no difference between the incentive treatments. Our results suggest foregoing small conditional non-monetary incentives can be cost-effective for this type of specialized recreation survey using an email protocol. However, generalizability to other populations, incentives, and protocols requires further research. The non-monetary incentive did not meaningfully impact response rates or estimates in this context.