I’ve seen this sort of prize for a few things recently. I don’t really understand how it’s supposed to incentivise me to complete the survey. The total money donated is $500 regardless of how many complete the survey, so unless I think that I’m at least as well informed than the average respondent about where this money should go (which I definitely don’t!) then if anything, isn’t it an incentive to not complete the survey?
unless I think that I’m at least as well informed than the average respondent about where this money should go
This applies if your ethics are very aligned with the average respondent, but if not, it is a decent incentive. I’d be surprised if almost all of EAs’ disagreement on cause prioritization were strictly empirical.
I think my ethics are less considered than the average EA community member, so I think I’d rather defer the decision to them. Doesn’t seem especially motivating for me personally.
Presumably part of the idea is that it is somewhat incentivising while also being very cheap: the money goes to places CEA would like to support anyway, and doesn’t really motivate non-EAs to take the survey.
A different concern is it is not clear to me how counterfactually valid the donation is.
I agree this won’t be an incentive to many EAs. So long as it serves as an incentive to some respondents, it still seems likely to be net positive though. (Of course, it’s theoretically possible that offering the prize might crowd out altruistic motivations (1) (2) (3), but we don’t have an easy way to test this and my intuition is that the overall effect would still be net positive).
I would hope that concerns about being less well placed to make the donation would not incentivise people to not take the EA Survey, just so that they don’t risk winning the prize and making a sub-optimal donation. If the respondent doesn’t feel comfortable just delegating the decision elsewhere, they could always decline the prize, in which case it could be given to another randomly selected respondent.
Right, that makes sense, thanks. To clarify, I don’t actually think anyone will be put off taking the survey because of this. I will definitely be taking it anyway :)
Regarding the $500 “prize”:
I’ve seen this sort of prize for a few things recently. I don’t really understand how it’s supposed to incentivise me to complete the survey. The total money donated is $500 regardless of how many complete the survey, so unless I think that I’m at least as well informed than the average respondent about where this money should go (which I definitely don’t!) then if anything, isn’t it an incentive to not complete the survey?
This applies if your ethics are very aligned with the average respondent, but if not, it is a decent incentive. I’d be surprised if almost all of EAs’ disagreement on cause prioritization were strictly empirical.
I think my ethics are less considered than the average EA community member, so I think I’d rather defer the decision to them. Doesn’t seem especially motivating for me personally.
Presumably part of the idea is that it is somewhat incentivising while also being very cheap: the money goes to places CEA would like to support anyway, and doesn’t really motivate non-EAs to take the survey.
A different concern is it is not clear to me how counterfactually valid the donation is.
I agree this won’t be an incentive to many EAs. So long as it serves as an incentive to some respondents, it still seems likely to be net positive though. (Of course, it’s theoretically possible that offering the prize might crowd out altruistic motivations (1) (2) (3), but we don’t have an easy way to test this and my intuition is that the overall effect would still be net positive).
I would hope that concerns about being less well placed to make the donation would not incentivise people to not take the EA Survey, just so that they don’t risk winning the prize and making a sub-optimal donation. If the respondent doesn’t feel comfortable just delegating the decision elsewhere, they could always decline the prize, in which case it could be given to another randomly selected respondent.
For what it’s worth I thought it was a nice touch and agree it’s likely to incentivise some and unlikely to put off any (/many)
Right, that makes sense, thanks. To clarify, I don’t actually think anyone will be put off taking the survey because of this. I will definitely be taking it anyway :)