Texas Inspection and Maintenance Fee Survey

By legislative requirement, every two years, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality needs to assess a fair fee to car owners and businesses for vehicle emissions inspections. Sufficient responses are needed from four different Texas regions to inform the economic analysis; however, survey fatigue is a major obstacle as many of these emissions inspection stations have been performing the survey for well over 10 years.

ERG has been designing and implementing the survey and accompanying financial analysis biannually since 2007. To minimize survey fatigue, we collect data from other sources whenever feasible. This reduces the data needed from the stations, enabling us to design a briefer survey. We also distribute the survey electronically and by mail so that business owners can choose the option they prefer. And, when respondents drop out, we carefully analyze their responses to gain insights into how to streamline the survey. With these measures, we have successfully maintained the response rate despite concerns about survey fatigue.