The Effects of a Targeted “Early Bird” Incentive Strategy on Response Rates, Fieldwork Effort, and Costs in a National Panel Study.

Adaptive survey design is a powerful tool that can be used to combat declining response rates in household surveys. One way to implement adaptive survey design is to utilize incentives. The use of early-bird incentive (EBI) has been found to increase response rates as well as lower study costs in a sample of high-effort respondents from the 2019 wave of the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics.