Two Web-based experiments examined the usefulness of artificially delaying the loading of the first study page. The hope attached to this technique is to filter out less-motivated respondents through a higher respondent burden in the form of waiting time. Participants who remain in the study despite having had to wait for the first study page to appear on the screen are expected to be more highly moti­vated and thus to produce data of higher quality.

ln both experiments, as expected, the longer the loading time, the lower the like­lihood of people responding to the study. However, contrary to expectation, the dropout rate and quality of data were independent of the loading time. Therefore, artificially delaying the loading of the first study page is counterproductive.