Investigating respondents' willingness to participate in video-based web surveys

Abstract

Recent developments in communication technology and changes in people’s communication habits facilitate new data collection forms in web surveys. Technical devices, such as computers, tablets, and smartphones, enable researchers to rethink established communication forms and add a human touch to web surveys. Designing web surveys more human-like has the great potential to make communication between researchers and respondents more natural, which may result in higher survey satisfaction and data quality. Considering the existing survey literature, there are only a few studies investigating respondents’ willingness for new communication forms in web surveys. Hence, in the present study, we explore respondents’ willingness to take part in web surveys to have interviewers read questions via pre-recorded videos (question delivery) and in which respondents provide their answers orally via self-recorded videos (question answering). We included two willingness questions – one on question delivery via pre-recorded videos and one on question answering via self-recorded videos – in the non-probability SoSci panel in Germany. The results reveal that respondents’ willingness to have questions read by interviewers is higher than their willingness to self-record video answers. Believing that technology facilitates communication and perceiving the survey as being interesting increases willingness, whereas evaluating the survey topic as sensitive decreases willingness. Personality traits do not play a role when it comes to respondents’ willingness, except for extraversion.