Survey participation and response rates : a cross-culture comparison

This paper aims to examine the survey participation and response rates for personal interviews conducted in two culturally different places. Field experiments were designed to investigate the extent to which the theories of exchange, cognitive dissonance, self-perception, and commitment/involvement can influence potential respondents to participate in a personal interview survey in Australia and Hong Kong. The results show that the theory of self perception has the strongest impact on survey response behaviour in Australia, while the cognitive dissonance has the least impact. On the other hand, the theory of exchange is the most effective in Hong Kong, while the least is self-perception. Managerial implications for international marketing research are discussed