Skills, availability, willingness, expected participation and burden of sharing visual data within the frame of web surveys

Abstract

AbstractAlthough there is literature on the willingness to share visual data in the frame of web surveys and the actual participation when asked to do so, no research has investigated the skills of the participants to create and share visual data and the availability of such data, along with the willingness to share them. Furthermore, information on the burden associated with answering conventional questions and performing visual data-related tasks is also scarce. Our paper aims to fill those gaps, considering images and videos, smartphones and PCs, and visual data created before and during the survey. Results from a survey conducted among internet users in Spain (N = 857) show that most respondents know how to perform the studied tasks on their smartphone, while a lower proportion knows how to do them on their PC. Also, respondents mainly store images of landscapes and activities on their smartphone, and their availability to create visual data during the survey is high when answering from home. Furthermore, more than half of the participants are willing to share visual data. When analyzing the three dimensions together, the highest expected participation is observed for visual data created during the survey with the smartphone, which also results in a lower perception of burden. Moreover, older and lower educated respondents are less likely to capture and share visual data. Overall, asking for visual data seems feasible especially when collected during the survey with the smartphone. However, researchers should reflect on whether the expected benefits outweigh the expected drawbacks on a case-by-case basis.