Facebook Social Proof for Field Survey Participation
RCTClinical Trial
Recruiting diaspora migrant populations for longitudinal financial tracking studies suffers from high refusal rates due to participant suspicion regarding fraud and data privacy.
Picture this
Publicly displaying photos of peers receiving official university completion certificates on a community social media page leverages social proof, making potential recruits feel safe and eager to join because they see people like themselves participating.
What the evidence says
Social proof validation helped overcome initial refusal challenges, enabling successful enrollment of 8,248 participants and sustained engagement across 51,395 weekly survey responses over 30 weeks.
- Who was studied
- N = 8,248 enrolled Filipino migrant workers in Dubai and Sharjah, UAE.
- How
- Community social proof intervention maintaining a dedicated public Facebook page where photos of participants holding official university participation certificates were routinely posted alongside running participation totals.
What to do
Publish photos of participants holding verified completion certificates on official social media channels to establish peer trust and boost recruitment in diaspora field research.
From the source
"We also maintained a Facebook page for this study and asked respondents to like the page. We regularly posted pictures of respondents holding their certificates of participation on the Facebook page and announced the current number of participants. Seeing that a large number of fellow Filipinos are participating gave people more confidence in the study."
A Field Experiment among Filipino Migrant Workers in the UAE.pdf