A Comparison of Mail and Internet Survey Procedures

Internet surveying continues to grow in tourism and leisure research. Internet surveying, according to the literature, has a number of advantages; it saves time and money, data entry is direct, it reaches a larger population, and the response rate is higher than that of other methods. Despite such advantages, it would be premature to proclaim its replacing of mail surveying. This study aims to identify any significant differences in procedures between Internet and mail surveys. As part of a wine tourism research project, researchers distributed either Internet-based or mail paper-based surveys to 3,649 participants. Participants were recruited by tasting room operators from 15 wineries in northern Michigan. A comparison study looked at the respondents’ preferred survey procedures and differences between the response rates and response content of the two procedures. Results show that, indeed, the response rate, profiles of respondents, and visitor experience questions differ according to procedure. 1.0 Introduction As Internet access has improved dramatically in recent years, tourism and leisure research more and more avails itself of Internet surveying (Cole, 2005; Sheehan & Hoy, 1999; Ward, Clark, Zabriskie, & Morris, 2012). More effective surveying procedures are the focus of the researchers designing tourism and recreation surveys. The research environment for researchers, as well as survey respondents, has been impacted by rapid changes in technology and culture (Cobanoglu, Warde, & Moreo, 2001; Sills & Song, 2002). For instance, significant advances in computer technology and the widespread use of Internet and mobile communication allows today’s researchers to create new modes of data distribution, data collection, and data entry procedures (Cole, 2005; Dillman, Smyth, & Christian, 2009; Eaton et al., 2010). Such procedural shifts have given rise to a strong need to compare surveying procedures—especially those of mail and Internet types (Cook, Heath, & Thompson, 2000; Truell, Bartlett, & Alexander, 2002). In addition, tourism and leisure researchers need to better understand the differences between surveying procedures so as to be able to adopt innovative options and to enhance their research findings. Studies of surveying procedures typically assess their advantages and disadvantages by comparing them to traditional survey methods such as mail and telephone surveys (Cole, 2005; Eaton et al., 2010; Kaplowitz, Hadlock, & Levine, 2004; Ward et al., 2012). According to the literature, Internet surveying has many advantages. It allows researchers to save time and money, directly enter data, incorporate automatic branching in questionnaires, and force adherence to a particular question format (e.g., select only one; (Dillman et al., 2009; Eaton et al., 2010). Despite the number of advantages of Internet surveying, Dillman et al. (2009) and Ward et al. (2012) asserted that it was premature to argue that such surveying has replaced its mail counterpart. Also, when researchers rely on the Internet survey method, they can face limitations in terms of sampling bias and representativeness of sample size because not everyone has Internet access and respondents’ perceived legitimacy of the method (e.g., phishing, spam mail). Such concerns about Internet surveying can be added to the issue of the expected lower response rates. The goal of this project is twofold: 1) to identify significant difference between the Internet survey and mail survey procedures when participants are given a choice of survey procedures and 2) to investigate what respondents’ preferences are concerning the two procedures. By comparing both methods, we can better understand the preferences of tourism survey respondents and which method might be most effective at addressing future research quality. Specifically, the objectives of the present study include: 1) comparing profiles of Internet survey respondents and mail survey respondents; 2) identifying differences between two sampling groups; and 3) comparing response rates of Internet and the mail surveys.