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1. The Visible Cash Effect with Prepaid Incentives: Evidence for Data Quality, Response Rates, Generalizability, and Cost

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smac032  

   DeBell, Matthew (November 2022, Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology)

   Abstract A prior study found that mailing prepaid incentives with $5 cash visible from outside the envelope increased the response rate to a mail survey by 4 percentage points compared to cash that was not externally visible. This “visible cash effect” suggests opportunities to improve survey response at little or no cost, but many unknowns remain. Among them: Does the visible cash effect generalize to different survey modes, respondent burdens, and cash amounts? Does it differ between fresh samples and reinterview samples? Does it affect data quality or survey costs? This article examines these questions using two linked studies where incentive visibility was randomized in a large probability sample for the American National Election Studies. The first study used $10 incentives with invitations to a long web questionnaire (median 71 minutes, n = 17,849). Visible cash increased response rates in a fresh sample for both screener and extended interview response (by 6.7 and 4.8 percentage points, respectively). Visible cash did not increase the response rate in a reinterview sample where the baseline reinterview response rate was very high (72 percent). The second study used $5 incentives with invitations to a mail-back paper questionnaire (n = 8,000). Visible cash increased the response rate in a sample of prior nonrespondents by 4.0 percentage points (from 31.5 to 35.5), but it did not increase the response rate in a reinterview sample where the baseline reinterview rate was very high (84 percent). In the two studies, several aspects of data quality were investigated, including speeding, non-differentiation, item nonresponse, nonserious responses, noncredible responses, sample composition, and predictive validity; no adverse effects of visible cash were detected, and sample composition improved marginally. Effects on survey costs were either negligible or resulted in net savings. Accumulated evidence now shows that visible cash can increase incentives’ effectiveness in several circumstances. 

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2. Experimental Effects of Advance Postcards, Survey Title, Questionnaire Length, and Questionnaire Content on Response Rates and Incentive Costs in a Mail Non-Response Follow-Up Survey

   https://doi.org/10.29115/SP-2022-0002  

   DeBell, Matthew (March 2022, Survey practice)

   A non-response follow-up study by mail in a national sample of U.S. households had five embedded experiments to test the effects of an advance mailing, alternate survey titles, 1- or 2-page questionnaire length, the inclusion or exclusion of political questions on the 1-page questionnaire, and the position of political content on the first or second page of the 2-page questionnaire. None of these design elements affected the payout of escalated postpaid incentives. Advance mailings had no effect on response rate. A short title (National Survey of Households) had a slightly higher response rate than a longer, more descriptive one (National Survey of Households, Families, and Covid-19). Political question content, whether by inclusion, exclusion, or position, had no discernable effect on response, even among prior-study non-respondents. Questionnaire length was inversely related to response: the 2-page questionnaire depressed the overall response rate by 3.7 points (58.5 compared to 54.8 percent, weighted) and depressed response for the critical sample group of prior non-respondents by 6.9 points (36.9 compared to 29.9). 

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3. Participation incentives in a survey of international non-profit professionals

   https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680221125723  

   Safarpour, Alauna; Bush, Sarah Sunn; Hadden, Jennifer (July 2022, Research & Politics)

   Elite surveys are increasingly common in political science, but how best to motivate participation in them remains poorly understood. This study compares the effect of three treatments designed to increase participation in an online survey of international non-profit professionals: a monetary reward, an altruistic appeal emphasizing the study’s benefits, and a promise to give the respondent access to the study’s results. Only the monetary incentive increased the survey response rate. It did not decrease response quality as measured in terms of straight-lining or skipped questions, although it may have produced a pool of respondents more likely to speed through the survey. The findings suggest that monetary incentives reduce total survey error even in the context of an elite survey, perhaps especially with elite populations frequently contacted by researchers. However, such incentives may not be without trade-offs in terms of how carefully respondents engage with the survey. 

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4. Digital Payment and Its Discontents: Street Shops and the Indian Government's Push for Cashless Transactions

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173803  

   Pal, Joyojeet; Chandra, Priyank; Kameswaran, Vaishnav; Parameshwar, Aakanksha; Joshi, Sneha; Johri, Aditya (January 2018, Proceedings of CHI 2018)

   In November 2016, the Government of India banned the vast majority of the nation’s banknotes in a move referred to as ‘demonetization’, with the stated goals of fighting corruption, terrorism, and eventually expanding digital transactions. In this study of 200 shop-keepers in Mumbai and Bengaluru, we found that cash shortage increased digital payment adoption but that digital payments fell after new banknotes became available. Digital payment adoption depended on the nature and scope of transactions, type of product sold, as well as personal factors specific to business owners such as comfort and familiarity with other digital technologies and online transactions. Using theoretical work on market and information behavior, we examined environmental pushes for technology adoption against prevalent transactional practices, trust, and control. We propose that the move toward digital payments must be framed within a larger undertaking of technology-driven modernity that drives these initiatives, rather than just the efficiency or productivity gains digital payments present. 

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5. Artificially Intelligent Electronic Money

   https://doi.org/10.1109/MCE.2020.3024512  

   Fragkos, Georgios; Minwalla, Cyrus; Plusquellic, Jim; Tsiropoulou, Eirini Eleni (January 2020, IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine)

   null (Ed.)

   Electronic money or e-Cash is becoming increasingly popular as the preferred strategy for making purchases, both on- and off-line. Several unique attributes of e-Cash are appealing to customers, including the convenience of always having "cash-on-hand" without the need to periodically visit the ATM, the ability to perform peer-to-peer transactions without an intermediary, and the peace of mind associated in conducting those transactions privately. Equally important is that paper money provides customers with an anonymous method of payment, which is highly valued by many individuals. Although anonymity is implicit with fiat money, it is a difficult property to preserve within e-Cash schemes. In this paper, we investigate several artificial intelligence (AI) approaches for improving performance and privacy within a previously proposed e-Cash scheme called PUF-Cash. PUF-Cash utilizes physical unclonable functions (PUFs) for authentication and encryption operations between Alice, the Bank and multiple trusted third parties (mTTPs). The AI methods select a subset of the TTPs and distribute withdrawal amounts to maximize the performance and privacy associated with Alice's e-Cash tokens. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the various AI approaches using a large test-bed architecture. 

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