Understanding the Motivations for Business Participation in Voluntary Web-Based Business Surveys

Brooke Dirtzu and Jason Kosakow
Additional contact information
Brooke Dirtzu: https://www.clevelandfed.org/people/profiles/d/dirtzu-brooke

Economic Commentary, 2026, vol. 2026, issue 18, 12

Abstract: As survey response rates decline nationwide, Federal Reserve Banks face challenges to engaging business survey panelists to collect some of the economic data that helps inform monetary policy. This Economic Commentary examines what motivates businesses to participate in some of the survey panels run by the regional groups at the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Richmond. Based on 312 survey responses, our results show that while helping the Fed is the primary motivation across all segments, participation drivers vary by firm size, recruitment method, and panel tenure. These findings have led the regional teams at both the Cleveland Fed and the Richmond Fed to implement targeted engagement strategies that build ongoing relationships with our survey respondents and demonstrate how survey data informs monetary policy decisions.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-ec-202618 Persistent link (text/html)
https://www.clevelandfed.org/-/media/project/cleve ... business-surveys.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedcec:103690

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.26509/frbc-ec-202618

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Commentary from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by 4D Library ().