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 :)
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 :)