Mobile technology has appeared as a new promising mode of collecting survey data. Accordingly, the need to understand the willingness to participate in mobile surveys emerged on the research agenda.

In trying to understand mobile survey participation, we introduce, synthesize, and extend a set of factors known to affect technology acceptance and use in general. By doing so, we apply, extend and refine past knowledge on the willingness to use new technology to the content area of (mobile) survey participation for the first time.

The multivariate framework proposed encompasses five main clusters of factors presumed to be systematically related to mobile survey participation. Specifically, these factors are: (1) utilitarian and functional aspects (costs, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use), (2) hedonic aspects (anticipated enjoyment in mobile surveys), (3) affective factors (attitude towards participation), (4) normative influences (subjective normative pressure to engage in mobile surveys), and (5) self-expressive aspects of mobile survey participation (the degree of self-image congruence). These five major determinants of mobile survey participation are synthesized into an overall model and empirically (cross-)validated with the aid of two independent samples.

As hypothesized, hedonic and affective factors (anticipated enjoyment; attitudes) exerted the largest effect on the willingness to participate, followed by the degree of identity expressiveness. While perceived costs did not play a significant role, factors affecting behavioral attitudes as specified within the technology acceptance model were largely in line with expectations.

The study results indicate the dominance of hedonic, affective and self-expressive factors in mobile survey participation. Based on these results, the implications for influencing the willingness to participate in mobile surveys will be discussed.