  We explore the impact of Casual Affective Triggers (CAT) on response rates of
online surveys. As CAT, we refer to objects that can be included in survey
participation invitations and trigger participants' affect. The hypothesis is
that participants who receive CAT-enriched invitations are more likely to
respond to a survey. We conducted a study where the control condition received
invitations without affective triggers, and the experimental condition received
CAT-enriched invitations. We differentiated the triggers within the
experimental condition: one-third of the population received a personalized
invitation, one-third received a picture of the surveyor's cat, and one-third
received both. We followed up with a survey to validate our findings. Our
results suggest that CATs have a positive impact on response rates. We did not
find CATs to induce response bias.
