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ROBERT A. HANSEN and LARRY M. ROBINSON

Recently the foot-in-the-door principle was a p p l i e d in a typical businessresearch setting by Reingen and Kernan. Results of this single-contact ornand elay foot application were mixed; compliance rates for the foot treatmentgroups lacked statistical significance when compared with those of appropr i a tecontrol groups. A field experiment undertaken to explain these results yieldsevidence that the specific nature of the faot manipulat ion in part determinesits effectiveness. The study compares the effectiveness of high and lowinvolvement foot manipulations in generating compliance with both short andlong forms of a mail questionnaire. The high and the low involvement footmanipulations generate significantly higher response rates and faster responsetimes than a noncontact control situation. In add i t i on , the short form question-naires generate a higher return rate. High involvement foot treatments gen erat ehigher response rotes than low involvement foot treatments. Managerial

implications of the results and suggestions for future research are presented.

Testing the Effectiveness of AlternativeFoot-in-the-Door Manipulations

Much attention h as been given to isolating the factorsleading to increased mail survey response rates.However, in spite of the large number of studiesconducted, little is known about why mail surveysubjects behave as they do (Kanuk and B erenson 1975;Linsky, 1975). Theory-anchored research is requiredif generalizations of results are to be made beyondthe unique combination of survey topic and samplepopulation used for a particular study. The recentefforts of Reingen and Kernan (1977; 1979) involvingthe use of a self-perception predicated foot-in-the-doormanipulation to increase p articipation in a mail surveyare examples of such theory-anchored research. Ourstudy co ntinues their efforts to apply the foot principlein a marketing research setting and offers an explana-

* Robert A. Hansen is Assistant Professor of Marketing, TheUniversity of Minnesota. Larry M. Robinson is Assistant Professorof Marketing, Georgia State University.The study was funded in part by a grant from the Arthur D.Hill Research Support Fund at Ohio State University and by grantsto the senior author from the Graduate School of Business Admin-istration and the University Computer Center, University of Min-nesota, Minneapolis. The authors thank Orville C. Walker, Jr. andtwo anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

tion for the mixed results in their most recent study.This explanation and extension of their work involvesusing alternate forms of the foot manipulation. Inaddition, by varying the amount of effort requiredby the subsequent or critical task, we investigate thepower of these alternate foot manipulations in amarketing research setting.BACKGROUND

The basic notion of the foot-in-the-door paradigmis straightforward; namely, compliance with a smallinitial request significantly enhances the likelihood ofcomphance with a larger subsequent task. The self-perception explanation ass erts that an individual infersattitudes and beliefs from observation of his/her ownbehavior. Thus, compliance with a small requestcauses the subject to infer a positive attitude aboutthe subject or task involved. The foot-in-the-dooreffect and the self-perception theory explanation havebeen discussed by Scott (1976; 1977).Reingen and Kerna n first applied the self-perceptionpredicated foot-in-the-door in a marketing researchcontext (1977; 1979). Their first study was designedto test the self-perception explanation of the phenom-enon in a business research setting. The self-percep-

35 9

Journal of Marketing ResearchVol. XVII (August 1980), 359-64

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360 JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, AUG UST 198tion explanation was upheld by the data. They conclu-ded that the greatest potential for use of the footwas as a form of precontact for a subsequent mailsurvey. The second study (1979) departed from theclassic format of foot-in-the-door studies in two re-spects. First, a single telephone contact was used forsolicitation of participation in both the foot and criticaltasks. Second, actual compliance rather than statedcomphance was used as the measure of performance.Results of this second experiment were mixed forboth verbal and behav ioral compliance with the criticaltask (i.e., completion and return of a six-page mailsurvey). Behavioral compliance measures yieldedtreatment differences in the predicted direction (i.e.,foot return was greater than precontact return, andprecontact return was greater than no precontactreturn), but the differences lacked significance.

Reingen and Kernan suggested two possible ex-planations for the lack of statistical significance be-tween treatments. First, psychological reactance mayhave been aroused. That is, the one-contact interactioncoupled with the selfish nature of the request mayhave aroused a desire, in some subjects, to demon-strate freedom of choice by reacting in a directionopposite the perceived pressure. Second, the highrespon se to the initial request suggests a ceiling effect.The authors noted a need for research to investigatethese possible explanations of the poor performanceof the foot-in-the-door manipulation.Another possible reason for the lack of significantresults in the most recent study by Reingen and K ernanis the use of a single contact for soliciting participationin both the foot and critical tasks. The issue is whe theror not the subject has time to make belief inferencesabout him/herself on the basis of the behavior elicitedby the foot manipulation when both requests are madeat the same point in time.The attribution theory literature does not providean answer to this timing question. This literature simplystates that self-attributions are made, and does notpostulate how long a period of time is required.However, there is some empirical support for theeffectiveness of a "nondelayed foot" (e.g., Cann,Sherm an, and Elkes 1975; Reingen 1978). Cann, Sher-man, and Elkes found that, "If a small favor isrequested initially, the timing of the second requestis of little importance." They concluded that, "Thepresen t results would seem to indicate there is actuallyvery little difference in the compUance rates obtainedin the 'small-request-no delay' and 'small request-delay' condition" (1975, p. 179).

O VER VIE W OF STUD YOur study shares three key characteristics with thesecond Reingen and Kernan experiment. First, thestudy generated a high overall response rate to thesurvey request which is similar to the ceiling effectreported by Reingen and Kernan. Second, we used

the same one-contract request format but with twofoot manipulations (one similar to that used by R eingenand Kernan). Third, our study had a marketing research (consumers' attitudes toward recent new capurchases) rather than a prosocial topic. The sponsoring organization was a university instead of a fictitiouresearch company as used by Reingen and KernanUse of the university sponsor makes possible theseparation of sponsor and topic effects as ex planationsfor Reingen and Kernan's mixed results.Nature of the Foot Manipulation

The attempt to manipulate the nature of the initiaor foot request follows directly from Freedman andFraser's (1966) suggestion that the reason the fooworks is that it allows the respondent to becomeinvolved in the subject area. Therefore, a properlydesigned foot could generate more involvement andhence, lead to a greater degree of participation withthe subsequen t larger request. In searching for possiblalternative formats for the foot, we asked telephoninterviewers and interviewer supervisors what typof questioning method allowed the respondent tobecome more involved in a subject or topic area undeconsideration. There was considerable agreemenamong interviewers and supervisors that subject involvement increased whenever the interview procesincluded followup or probe questions.

These questions, which allowed the subject to indicate why he or she felt a particular way, workedmuch better than simple yes/no questions in buildinhigh subject involvement. The yes/no question format, which was considered least desirable by interviewers, involved reading a statement to a respondenand asking the respondent to indicate whether he oshe agreed or disagreed with it. We used these twquestioning methods (probe, yes/no) as alternativoperations of the foot principle. The foot manipulatioused by Reingan and Kernan, which involved askinthe subject to answer four short questions relateto soft drink preference and consumption, is similato the yes/no or low involvement foot used in ouexperiment.We expected compliance with the foot telephoninterviews to lead to increased compliance with thlarger questionnaire task. The expectations are summarized in H, and H^ (see Table 1 for an explanatioof the treatment letter designations).H,: Response rates will he greater for the yes/nformat (C and D) and probe format ( and Finitial request treatments than for the controtreatment {A and B).Hj: Response rates will be greater for the probe form( and E) initial request treatments than for thyes /no format (Cand D) initial request treatment

In addition to the standard response rate measuredependent measures of response speed and respons

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TESTING FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR MANIPULATIONS 361Table 1

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNSIZE OF QUESTIONNAIRENature ofprecontact

NonecontrolYes /noformatfootProbeformatfoot

ShortformAN = \00CN = \00E7^= 100

LongformBN = \00DN = \00FN = 100

quality as measured by completeness were includedin the analysis (Hansen and Scott 1977; Houston andFord 1976). We expected that the foot treatments ingeneral and the probe treatment in particular wouldgenerate faster and more complete returns.' Theseexpectations are summarized in H3_j.H3: Speed of response will be faster for the yes/noformat (C and D) and probe format (E and E)initial request treatments than for the controltreatment {A and B).H4: Speed of response will be faster for the probeformat {E and F) initial request treatments thanfor the yes/no format (C and D) initial requesttreatments.H5: Completeness of response will be greater for theyes/no format (C and D) and probe format (Eand F) initial request treatments than for thecontrol group (A and B) treatments.Hg: Completeness of response will be greater for theprobe format (E and F) initial request treatmentthan for the yes /no format (C and D) initial requesttreatments.

Size of Subsequent or C ritical TaskIn addition to testing the propo sition that the formatof the foot determine s its effectiveness, we investigat-ed the relationship between the foot and the lengthof the critical task by using two lengths of followupquestionnaires. Both contained b asic demographic andclassification question s as well as a series of attitudinalquestions. The short task questionnaire contained 11attitudinal questions (32 total) and the long task ques-tionnaire contained 81 (102 total). The attitudinal itemsincluded in the short form were selected from the81-item pool subject to the constraint that one item

be chosen from each of 11 constructs composing the81-item pool. In this way, topic bias was minimized,as respondents in each treatment group were asked' A questionnaire returned within 35 days that w as 85% completewas considered a response. Response slowness for a treatmentis the mean number of days it took to return a questionnaire.Response completeness was measured as the percentage of unan-swered questions for those questionnaires satisfying the 85% com-plete return criterion.

to respond to questions on similar subject matter(Berdie 1973). We expected that the response to theshorter questionnaire would be greater than the re-sponse to the appropriate long form questionnaire.H,: Response rate will be greater for all short ques-tionnaire treatments (y4, C, and E) than for longquestionnaire treatments (B, D, and F).

METHODA 3 X 2 factorial design was used to test the effectof an initial contact on the degree of compliance witha subsequent mail questionnaire request. The threeinitial requests included the probe and a y es /n o formatfoot treatment as well as a no contact control treat-ment. The two levels of mail questionnaire requestwere the 32-item and 102-item questionnaires (seeTable 1).The topic was the respondents' attitudes towardtheir most recent new car purchase. The generalquestions covered issues such as their degree ofsatisfaction with the automobile and the sources ofinformation used in deciding what automobile to pur-chase. Subjects were selected at random from themost recent Columbus, Ohio, telephone directory. Atotal of 600 questionnaires were sent to subjects (100in each treatment).Two hundred questionnaires were mailed to a ran-dom group of subjects without any prior notification.The remaining 400 were mailed after an initial tele-phone call was made. Interviewers made telephonecalls to equal numbers of subjects in each of the fourprior notification treatments. Potential subjects werescreened by asking whether they had purchased anew car within the last three years. If they said theyhad, they were asked to answer some basic questionson general perceptions toward automobile d ealers. Anuppe r limit of five m inutes was se t for this foot-in-the-door interview. At the end of five minu tes, the su bjectwas asked if he/she would be willing to participatein the mail survey portion of the study. The questionsasked during the foot-in-the-door interview had beengenerated during previous focus group discussion onconsumers' perceptions of satisfaction with their newcar purchases (Robinson 1977). The same questionswere asked in the high and low involvement treatm ents,the difference being the way the questions we re asked .In the low involvement interviews, subjects were reada statement (e.g., "all car dealers overcharge on theirrepair work") and were asked whether they agreedwith the stateme nt. In the high involvement treatme nt,in addition to being asked whether they agreed withthe statement, subjects were asked why they felt thatway.Once a subject had been screened (i.e., purchaseda new car within the last three years), that personreceived a copy of the questionnaire in the mailregardless of whether he /s he had agreed to participateor even to answer the initial questions in the foot-in-

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362 JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, AUGUST 1980Table 2

RESULTS OF HYPOTHESIS TESTS

Nature ofinitial contact

Response rate*(% returned)

Response speed*"(in days)

Short form Long form Shortform Longform

Response completeness"(% unanswered questions)

Shortform LongformYes/no footProbe footNo contact control

42.7"57.6 '29.732.945.6 '16.6

7.57.4

13.87.87.7

14.24.013.984.02

3.984.014.06

*X resultscomparisons using a 2 x 2 contingency table comparing individual treatments with appropriate control group."ANOVA resultsmain effect form of contact significant beyond .001 level; main effect length of questionnaire not significant.'ANOVA resultsmain effect form of contact not significant; main effect length of questionnaire not significant.''Significantly greater than control group at .09 level."Same at .025 level.'Same at .005 level.Note: All chi-square tests were corrected for continuity.

the-door manipulation.^ These questionnaires weremailed within three day s of the initial contact. A secondwave of questionnaires was sent to all subjects whohad not responded to the first questionnaire within10 day s.

RESULTSTable 2 summarizes the results of the hypothesistesting for the six experimental conditions in the stu dy.The results support hypotheses H,_3 and H.,. H4_6are rejected.Response rates are greater for the four foot treat-ment groups than for the corresponding control groups(H ,). As predicted, theprobe format foot treatmentsgenerate higher response rates than the ye s/ no formatfoot treatments (H 2). The control groups are signifi-cantly slower in responding to the mail survey thanare the four telephone contact groups (Hj)." In addi-tion, for all pairs of precontact conditions, the shortform questionnaire has a significantly higher respo nserate than the long form questionnaire (H ,).The two telephone contact conditions give similarpatterns in terms of response speed (H^). The resultsindicate no relationship between foot manipulationsand response completeness (H5, H^). That is, no^ There is a possible sampling error in contacting the controlsonly at Time 2. Subjects who could not be contacted at Time

1 had been eliminated from the experimental groups but not fromthe control group. However, of the 400 subjects contacted at Time1, only five could not be reached at Time 2. Thus the subjectpopulations available at both Time 1 and Time 2 and that availableonly at Time 2 are virtually identical.

'For further evidence of the efficacy of a prenotification telephonecall in a similar data collection situation see Robinson (1977) andfor a review of all forms of prior notification see for exampleKanuk and Berenson (1975) or Linsky (1975).

" A faster return is desired only if the speed is not gained atthe expense of response quality or degree of completeness. Toexamine this relationship, a correlation analysis was conductedbetween response speed and response completeness. The resultsof this analysis show no statistically significant relationship betweenspeed and completeness.

differences are found for response completeness between any of the experimental conditions.DISCUSSIONThe Foot-in-the-Door Frinciples

The results of our study provide further supporfor the foot-in-the-door technique. That is, compliancewith the small task telep hone interview led to increasedcompliance with the subsequent larger task of completing a mail questionnaire. Aspredicted by self-perception theory, compliance with a telephone interviewrequest for self-report data increased the probabilityof actual compliance with a subsequent larger requesfor additional data.Other results are less supportive of researchhypotheses. Foot treatment subjects are not differenfrom control subjects in percentages of questionnairitems completed. Thus, the basic expectation thasubjects who formed favorable attitudes toward thissue and/or task would provide more data is nosupported. Perhaps, as Seligman, Bush, and Kirsch(1976) suggest, there is a " . . . fixed amount ocommitment that any individual is willing to makeon a particular issue" (p. 518).Measures of Compliance

The study provides evidence that agreement tparticipate with a subsequent request may not leato actual performance. FuUy 94.5% of probe treatmengroup subjects agreed to complete a mail survey, yeonly 57.6% completed the short questionnaire and45.6% completed the long questionnaire. Similarlyfor the yes/no initial task groups, 86.4% agreed tparticipate in the secon d task but only 42.8% completethe short questiormaire and 32.9% returned the longequestionnaire. Thus, we suggest that future researcon the foot-in-the-door mechanism include tests foactual compliance, rather than the weaker measurof compliance intention found in most studies citein the literature.

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TESTING FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR MANIPULATIONS 363Fractical Implications

The results clearly demonstrate that the degree ofeffectiveness of the foot is a function of the formatof the foot. There can be little doubt that the footprinciple works well in this data collection situationwith even the low involvemen t foot generating signifi-cantly higher response rates and speedier returns.However, the results suggest that considerable careshould go into the design of the format of the foot.In our study, the high involvement or probe formatfoot produced increases of 34.6 and 48.6% in theresponse rates of the short and long questionnairesin comparison with the low interaction or yes/noformat foot.In many marketing research situations the researcherrequires responses to both structured and un structuredquestions. Such research settings appear ideal forapplication of the foot technique. In our study, datawere required on level of satisfaction with an auto-mobile and actions taken as a result of satisfactionor dissatisfaction. These questions are well-suited toa telephone interview in which explanations and elab-orations could be provided. Data also were soughton the demographic, attitudinal, and personality corre-lates of satisfaction. These questions are amenableto a structured m ail survey form at. The ado pted designpermitted the gathering of both structured and un-structured responses with an approach that also stimu-lated response rates and response speed.Theoretical Implications

There is nothing in the self-perception literature tosuggest the period of time required for a subject tomake attitudinal inferences based on behavior. Theresults of our study and other empirical studies,however, indicate situations inwhich the foot p rincipleis likely to generate a high degree of complianc e. Th ese"situ ation s" are defined by three variables, sponsoringorganization, subject or topic of the request, and thetiming of requests. In general, the best results havebeen obtained when both the sponsoring organizationand the topic have been prosocial (see Reingen andKernan, 1979, for a review). Reingen and Kernan(1977) and Scott (1976), however, have found somesupport for the technique in commerical situationswhere the two requests were made in two separatecon tacts . ' These findings suggest that in general whentwo contacts are used the foot principle can producepositive results in prosocial and commercial situations.When a one-contact or nondelay format is used theresults are different. For example, Tybout (1978) andReingen and Kernan (1979) failed to generate positiveor supportive results in a commercial one-contactformat. There are, however, exceptions to this last

' In the Scott (1976) study, support for foot-in-the-door was foundonly when the analysis was confmed to those subjects who hadcomphed with the initial request.

observation (see Reingen and Kernan, 1979, for adiscussion). In spite of these exceptions, a generaliza-tion can be made: in prosocial situations the timingof requests is less important, i.e., there is a goodchance the foot will work in either a two-contact ora one-contact format. When a commercial, i.e., mar-keting research, situation is used, the foot is muchmore likely to work if the two-contact format is used.Results of our study are an exception to this genera-lization. Two explanations seem likely to explain thisdifference. One is that a modified foot was used,i.e., a high involvement foot was used to gain com-pliance. This explanation does not account for thesuccess of the low involvement manipulation. Ex-planation of its success is perhaps a function of thesponsoring organization. Recall that Reingen and Ker-nan used a fictitious marketing research agency intheir "com me rcial" situation. We used a similar topic(new car survey) but the study was sponsored bya university. In a sense the university-sponsoredbusines s researc h comb ination is not prosocial noris it commercial researc h; it is an in-between combina-tion.

Results of our study suggest that the high involve-ment foot would have th e greatest c hanc e of generatingcompliance in a regular commercial business researchsituation. The exact method of generating high in-volvement should be a function of the target popula-tion. That is, the high involvement foot should besubjected to a manipulation check using a sample ofthe target population.The foot principle offers considerable potential asa means of generating compliance with a surveyrequest. The results of our study help explain themixed results of earlier attempts to use the foot ina commercial setting. The notion of tailoring a highinvolvement foot to fit the specific target populationseems to be one way of making the foot work inthe one-contact format. Additional studies of thisnature are needed to help the marketing researchertake advantage of the foot principle.REFERENCES

Berdie, Douglas R. (1973), "Questionnaire Length andResponse Rate," Journal of Applied Psychology, 58 (Feb-ruary), 278-80.Cann , A., S. J. Sherman, and R. Elkes (1975), "Effe ctsof Initial Request Size and Timing of a Second Requeston CompUance: The Foot-in-the-Door and the Door-in-the-Face," Journal of Personality and So cial Psychology,32 (May), 774-82.Freedman, Jonathan L. and Scott C. Fraser (1966), "Com-pliance Without Pressure: The Foot-in-the-Door Techni-q u e , " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(October), 195-202.Hansen, Robert A. and Carol A. Scott (1977), "AUernativeApproaches for Assessing the Quality of Self ReportData," Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 5, 99-102.Houston, Michael J. and Neil M. Ford (1976), "Broadening

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364 JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, AUG UST 198the Scope of Methodological Research on Mail Sur vey s,"Journal of MarketingResearch, 13 (November), 397-403.Kanuk, Leslie and Conrad Berenson (1975), "Mail Surveysand Response Rates: A Literature Review," Journal ofMarketing Research, 12 (November), 440-53.Linsky, Arnold S. (1975). "Stimulating Responses to MailedQuestionnaires: A Review," Public Opinion Quarterly,39 (Spring), 82-101.Reingen, Peter H. (1978), "On Inducing Compliance withRequests," Journal of Consum er Research, 5 (September),96-102.and J. B. Kernan (1977), "Compliance With anInterview Requ est: A Foot-in-the-Door, Self-PerceptionInterpretation," Journal of Marketing Research, 14 (Au-gust), 365-9.and (1979), "M ore Eviden ce on Interpersona lYielding," Journalof MarketingResearch, 16 (November),588-93.

Robinson, Larry M . (1977), "Consum er Com plaint Behaviof New Car Owners: Development and Test of a Theoretcal Model," unpublished doctoral dissertation. The OhState University.Scott, Carol A. (1976), "The Effects of Trial and Incentivon Repeat Purchase Behavior," Journal of MarketinResearch, 13 (August), 26 3-9.(1977), "Modifying Socially-Conscious BehavioThe Foot-in-the-Door Technique," Journal of ConsumResearch, 4 (December), 156-64.Seligman, Clive, M. Bush, and K. Kirsch (1976), "Relatioship Between Compliance in the Foot-in-the-Door Pardigm and Size of First Request," Journal of Personaliand Social Psychology, 33 (May), 517-20.Tybout, Alice M. (1978), "The Relative Effectiveness Three Behavioral Influence Strategies as Supplements Persuasion in a Marketing C onte xt," Journal of M arketinResearch, 15 (May), 22 9-42.

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