LebGeeks

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#1 March 2 2019

eWizzard
Member

[How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

Rewards are useful as an extra incentive for people to take surveys, and monetary incentives are almost always the most effective at reducing the rate of non-responders (with some caveats, but that's another topic). However, in Lebanon, services such as PayPal don't exist, and the vast majority of Lebanese don't engage in online shopping with their credit/debit cards or prepaid internet cards anyway. Rewarding participants is therefore not a quick or straightforward procedure.

I'm designing a survey (non-geek subject matter, sorry) and here are my survey design goals:
• Online only.
• Completely anonymous; no personally identifying information is collected or shared.
• Upon completion, participants should be provided with a code or voucher which they should be able to redeem offline for cash or other desirable things of monetary value, e.g. lunch/dinner at X restaurant (although cash is most preferred).
• Non-response and failure to redeem shouldn't incur an unnecessary financial loss. In other words, if for whatever reason I get no participants or the participants choose not to redeem the codes, then I shouldn't lose the money.

I'm currently struggling to find such a local redemption system. I've considered purchasing a set of OMT numbers, but as far as I know those aren't anonymous (you have to provide your name as well as receiver names) and they cost money upfront which can be lost in case of non-response (I've never used OMT personally, so I could be wrong).

Anyone have any ideas on how to make this work?

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#2 March 2 2019

VincentKeyboard
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

OMT requires that you input the exact recipient name as written on his or her passport and you will need to pay a transaction fee per transaction. It's very manual.
How about giving people code numbers and they can meet you somewhere without giving identification apart from the code number you gave them on completing the survey. You can then pay them in cash without collecting any names or phone numbers.

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#3 March 2 2019

eWizzard
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

There's a few issues with that:
• You can't coordinate with participants if you don't have contact information.
• No communication = no clear schedule = no way to predict if and when they might show up at the location you posted.
• They'll have much less incentive to go if the chosen location is not normally within their everyday commute anyway.
• Fear, anxiety, antisocial habits are all non-negligible factors.

All in all, it'll be like waiting for ghosts to show up for lunch. I would much rather have something more like this:
• I go to an agency, reserve X amount of codes worth a certain amount of money.
• Participants redeem the codes they received from the survey at the agency, at any branch, anytime they want.
• Agency charges me for the codes that got redeemed.

I think that would probably be the ideal solution. If anyone knows of such a thing in Lebanon, please let me know.

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#4 March 2 2019

samer
Admin

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

You can build a paid survey via earn.com and have your participants get the incentive via Bitcoin. You can also do the same DIY, but earn.com could probably be more friendly for your non-techy participants.

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#5 March 2 2019

eWizzard
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

My target audience is basically a group of very traditional Lebanese, so cryptocurrencies and other similar "fazlaket" (as they would probably say) are a definite no-go. Cold hard liras and dollars are the only things that count.

Does any local bank have anything comparable to my idea?

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#6 March 2 2019

nuclearcat
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

Just idea - gift cards

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#7 March 2 2019

eWizzard
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

eGift cards are nice, but they're prepaid only, meaning you have to pay upfront, and if no one redeems them, then you have to go through the trouble of reselling them or else risk losing the money.
Physical gift cards share the same issue, plus they have to be physically delivered to anonymous people.
Both varieties are not normally refundable or exchangeable for money.

I'll see if Fransabank can offer something close to my idea.

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#8 March 2 2019

samer
Admin

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

eGift cards are nice, but they're prepaid only, meaning you have to pay upfront, and if no one redeems them, then you have to go through the trouble of reselling them or else risk losing the money.

I'm pretty sure you can generate those on-demand through an API. An alternative would be to send the reward X hours after the survey is done (where you bulk purchase the cards and send them once per day).

My target audience is basically a group of very traditional Lebanese, so cryptocurrencies and other similar "fazlaket" (as they would probably say) are a definite no-go

Depends how much they need the money.

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#9 March 5 2019

Guitaret
Member

Re: [How?] Monetary incentives for anonymous online surveys in Lebanon

Just a hopeful hint about an observation; I am not promising a solution here.
BDL promised that we will have a digital currency this year in LL.
I have been checking the media for updates in the last 2 months but so far I have found nothing but the original news is official.

However, we do not know how this will work: Do we need a bank account in order for this to work? How much fees: per transaction? Monthly? How much info should we know about the recipient in order to send money (anonymity)?

Cheers

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