Abstract
Respondents in online panels often lack motivation when completing research questionnaires. We propose a method to improve their motivation. In many online survey platforms, questionnaires start with a relatively trivial task (e.g., self-identification or responding to screener demographic questions). We show that bringing attention to the completion of these trivial tasks can increase participants’ motivation in the subsequent main task; without this completion cue, the completion of the trivial task tends to go unnoticed. Using different trivial tasks (e.g., providing demographic information, stapling a questionnaire) and main tasks (e.g., commenting about a situation, recalling information), four experiments demonstrate what we call the “trivial-task motivation effect”. We further show that trivial tasks need not be irritants and may be added to surveys, along with a completion cue, to boost motivation. Our research presents an easily implemented and low-cost method to increase motivation in surveys.
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Notes
All the appendices are included in the online supplementary material.
Ten participants indicated that they had done the same writing task before (6 in the no-completion-cue condition, 4 in the completion-cue condition), and 48 participants (22 in the completion-cue condition and 26 in the no-completion-cue condition) failed the attention-check question. Among these, 8 participants (3 in the completion-cue condition and 5 in the no-completion-cue condition) both failed the attention-check question and indicated that they have written the same essay before. Altogether, a total of 50 participants were eventually excluded from the analysis. Including them all did not change the pattern of results.
In another separate follow-up study, we measured the estimated duration of the study after participants were (vs. were not) exposed to the completion cue. We found that participants in both the completion-cue and no-completion-cue conditions estimated the study to be equally short. Altogether, these two post-studies suggest that while the completion cue does not necessarily impact the estimated duration, it induces the feelings that the participants have done something.
Six participants did not staple the questionnaire, and 2 participants did not watch the advertisement video, as the video did not function properly (4 in the trivial-task-no-completion-cue condition, 4 in the trivial-task-completion-cue condition). Including these 8 participants did not change the pattern of results.
Ten participants (2 in the completion-cue condition, 3 in the no-completion-cue condition, and 5 in the pause condition) admitted to taking notes during the logo task. Including these 10 participants did not change the pattern of results.
We chose not to measure participants’ feelings of making progress as a mediator and test for the process explanation. This approach is less appropriate in our context where participants are presented with a focal task right after the completion cues. If we measure their momentary feeling of progress after this focal task, their perception of progress might be influenced by completion of the focal task itself, such that participants in all conditions would feel that they have already made progress after completing the focal task.
Sixty-five participants (37 in the completion-cue condition and 28 in the no-completion-cue condition) failed the attention-check questions and were dropped from further analysis, leaving 390 participants. Including these participants did not change the pattern of results.
Our percentage of high versus low productivity-oriented participants was similar to that reported in Keinan and Kivetz (2011), corroborating their results.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Szu-Chi Huang, Juliano Laran, and Gabriele Paolacci for their helpful comments, and acknowledge HEC Foundation, and NTU Start-Up Grant for the financial support.
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This research is funded by HEC Foundation and NTU Start-Up Grant.
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Gu, Y., Chan, E. & Krishna, A. The trivial-task motivation effect: highlighting completion of an initial trivial task increases motivation for the main task. Mark Lett 35, 219–230 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-023-09692-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-023-09692-5