Abstract
Stated preference surveys are increasingly conducted online using internet panel samples, where a fast-growing share of respondents answer on smartphones. These panel members range from novices to “professionals” in terms of previous survey experience. Little is known about the potential effects of smartphone responding and survey experience on the data quality of stated preference surveys. This paper uses a discrete choice experiment dataset on the Norwegian population’s willingness to pay to plant climate forests to explore how these two factors affect data quality. These data by type of response device, gathered using a probability-based internet panel, were combined with a unique dataset obtained from the survey company on respondents’ actual experience answering surveys on different types of devices. Our results show that differences in elicited preferences between smartphone and computer respondents are not caused by the device used, suggesting that initial concerns about smartphone responses may be exaggerated. Furthermore, more experience is associated with an increasing scale parameter (indicating lower error variance), but at a decreasing rate; and a higher propensity to choose the status quo (indicating possible simplifying strategies employed by respondents). Combined this suggest some optimal level of experience that is neither too high nor too low. We discuss the implications of our results for stated preference research and provide a few avenues for future research.
Highlights
Research in environmental economics, and economics in general, has over the last decades become more empirical and utilise population survey data to a larger extent than in the past (Angrist et al 2017; Kube et al 2018)
We see that respondents answering on a computer have answered a larger number of surveys than respondents answering on a smartphone, i.e., they have more survey experience
This, combined with the fact that 89 per cent of respondents answering on a computer stated that they prefer to answer on a computer and 65 percent of smartphone respondents stated that they prefer to answer on a smartphone, suggests that people will answer the survey on their preferred device
Summary
Economics in general, has over the last decades become more empirical and utilise population survey data to a larger extent than in the past (Angrist et al 2017; Kube et al 2018). It is a challenge in such studies to separate self-selection effects from pure measurement effects related to the device (Liebe et al (2015) for choice experiments and Skeie et al (2019) for contingent valuation) While this initial research may look reassuring at first glance, the jury is still out on whether smartphone responding in internet panel surveys may be a potential problem in SP research; for data quality and the validity and trust in internet panel surveys and the resulting welfare estimates used in, for example, cost–benefit analysis. Even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in a latent class framework, we find that increased experience is associated with a higher propensity to choose the status quo and that the choice process, as seen from the econometrician’s point of view, becomes more deterministic but at a decreasing rate This may indicate that, beyond a certain point, respondents become so-called “professional” (Sandorf et al 2020).
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