Incentives in surveys

Surveys typically use hypothetical questions to measure subjective and unverifiable concepts like happiness quality of life. We test whether this is problematic using a large survey experiment on health well-being. Prelec’s Bayesian truth serum incentivize the defaults introduce biases in responses. Without defaults, data was good incentives had no impact. With reduced default well-being by inducing participants spend more effort. Incentives impact regardless were used.