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Report
The 2011 and 2012 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice: Technical Appendix
This document serves as the technical appendix to the 2011 and 2012 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice. The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) is an annual study designed primarily to study the evolving attitudes to and use of various payment instruments by consumers over the age of 18 in the United States. The main report, which introduces the survey and discusses the principal economic results, can be found here. In this data report, we detail the technical aspects of the survey design, implementation, and analysis.
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The 2016 and 2017 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice: Technical Appendix
This document serves as the technical appendix to the 2016 and 2017 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice administered by the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) is an annual study designed primarily to collect data on attitudes toward and use of various payment instruments by consumers over the age of 18 in the United States. The main report, which introduces the survey and discusses the principal economic results, is on our website at frbatlanta.org/banking-and-payments/consumer-payments/survey-of-consumer-payment-choice. In ...
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Identifying and Evaluating Sample Selection Bias in Consumer Payment Surveys
This paper develops a two-stage statistical analysis to identify and assess the effect of a sample selection bias associated with an individual’s household role. The methodology is applied to the 2012 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice. Survey responses to a series of questions about the respondent’s role in household finances are combined and adjusted for response error to estimate a latent variable that represents each individual’s share of household responsibility. The distribution of this variable among survey respondents suggests that the sampling procedure favors household members ...
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The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice : Technical Appendix, Research Data Report No. 17-4
This document serves as the technical appendix to the 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice administered by the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) is an annual study designed primarily to collect data on attitudes to and use of various payment instruments by consumers over the age of 18 in the United States. The main report, which introduces the survey and discusses the principal economic results, can be found at http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/cprc/SCPC. In this data report, we detail the technical aspects of the survey ...
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Consumer Payment Behavior by Income and Demographics
Despite the introduction of an array of innovations and new payment options for consumers over the last decade, income and demographics remain significant predictors of payment behavior. Using data from a 2023 consumer payments diary, we find that income, age, and education are significant predictors of which payment instruments consumers adopt and use. These associations hold not only for traditional payment instruments—cards and paper—but also for innovations such as mobile apps; buy now, pay later (BNPL); and cryptocurrency. In 2023, less educated consumers were significantly less ...
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How Do Consumers Make Their Payment Choices?
Payment transformation has generated a shift from paper to cards and electronic payments in the United States, but there is also a large degree of heterogeneity among consumers in howthey pay. We present factors affecting consumer payment behavior, show data on how consumers pay in the United States, and summarize existing literature on consumer payment choice. On the supply side, technology, regulation, and cost affect payment behavior. On the demand side, consumer demographics and income, consumer preferences, and consumer assessments of payment method attributes have all been found ...
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Consumer Payment Choice for Bill Payments
Why do U.S. consumers pay their bills the way they do? Using data from a recent diary of consumer payment behavior, we find that the type of bill consumers are paying and how they are paying (online or automatically) are important factors in determining the payment method, in addition to the dollar value of the bill and the demographic and income profile of the individual who is paying. In contrast, dollar value and demographic attributes are found to be the most important factors determining the payment instrument chosen for purchases. Consumer choices for bill payments are somewhat ...
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Did the Target Data Breach Change Consumer Assessments of Payment Card Security?
Previous research has found that perceptions of payment security affect consumers’ use of payment instruments. We test whether the Target data breach in 2013 was associated with a change in consumers’ perceptions of the security of credit cards and debit cards and with subsequent changes in consumers’ use of payment cards. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), we find that, controlling for possible confounding effects of demographic differences between the two groups, ratings by consumers who assessed the security of personal information of debit cards shortly ...
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Estimating Population Means in the 2012 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice
This report examines the effect of adding to a longitudinal panel on estimates of population parameters in the 2012 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) more than 1,000 newly recruited respondents specifically targeted to fill segments of the U.S. population that tend to be underbanked and underrepresented in the longitudinal panel. In many ways, the new respondents have fundamentally different characteristics from the ongoing respondents. To minimize confounding sources of change to annual estimates when making comparisons across years, the official 2012 SCPC publication was based on the ...
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How Do People Pay Rent?
Using data from the 2014 Boston Fed Bill Payment Experiment and the 2014 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), we investigate how households pay their rent. We find that the dominant methods for paying rent are cash (22 percent), check (42 percent), and money order (16 percent). Electronic methods are still rarely used, at 8 percent for bank account number payment and 7 percent for online banking bill payment, and less than 2 percent for debit and credit cards. Compared with other large bill payments of more than $200, rental payments are much more likely to be made with paper-based ...