2. Methodology Questionnaires were mailed to a sample of employees of a major life insurance company which currently operates an incentive program. An insurance company was selected as an appropriate site for the study since the insurance industry is one of the top users of incentive travel. The incentive rewards presently being offered at the company include annual sales conference trips, cash awards and merchandise awards. Sales conferences were described on the questionnaire as 'annual trips to sales conferences'. The qualifications and the site selection for the conferences vary each year. Destinations have included Amelia Island, the Bahamas and Las Vegas. Cash awards were described as involving up to $1000 in cash and merchandise awards were described as including answering machines, calculators and cameras. These descriptions are consistent with the awards that have been given in the past. The company is also interested in implementing personal vacation trips, described on the questionnaire as weekend excursions or getaways to selected destinations and, thus, they were included in the questionnaire to determine their attractiveness to employees.

3. Instrument The instrument was pilot tested with 24 employees of area businesses before the final instrument was prepared. Revisions to improve the clarity of the items were made based on their comments. Meetings were also held with appropriate management level individuals at the company in an attempt to further determine item appropriateness. The instrument consisted of several sections. Respondents were asked to provide personal demographic information (ie age, sex, household income, job status, education level) in order to assess differences in attractiveness among the various categories. The other sections of the instrument included: reward attractiveness scale; perceived social pressure assessment; willingness to increase productivity assessment; and sales contests assessment. Perceived social pressure was measured by asking respondents to consider the person, other than themselves, who would most strongly influence their decision to select a reward option. The first question in this section began by asking respondents to indicate their primary relationship to this person. They were then asked to indicate on a 7-point scale the degree to which this person would encourage them to select each of the reward items. This item was anchored by 'strongly discourage' and 'strongly encourage'. Motivation to comply was measured by asking them to respond to the statement, 'Generally speaking, I want to do what this person thinks I should do'. Operationalizing perceived social pressure in this manner is based on past research efforts of Ajzen and Driver. To assess willingness to increase productivity, respondents were asked to assume that there is only one type of incentive reward offered at the company. For each of the rewards, they were asked to indicate on a 7-point scale anchored by 'no additional effort at all' and 'a great deal of additional effort' how much effort they would be willing to exert in order to achieve that reward. This format follows the previous work of Hastings et al. Reward attractiveness was measured in a similar fashion. Respondents were asked to rate the incentive options, which included cash, merchandise,personal vacation trips and sales conference trips, on a 7-point scale anchored by 'very unattractive' and 'very attractive'. Respondents' attitudes about the sales contests were assessed by asking them to react to several questions using a 7-point scale anchored by 'strongly disagree' and 'strongly agree'. The items were adapted from Beltramini and Evans's earlier study.

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