Abstract
The foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face techniques for compliance were compared under conditions of high and low source legitimacy in a telephone survey. Calls were made to 240 people, employing either the FITD, DITF, or a control, requesting television viewing preferences for either a public interest group (high legitimacy) or a private consulting firm (low legitimacy). It was predicted that both techniques would be effective when legitimacy was high but that only the FITD would be effective when legitimacy was low. Compliance results supported this prediction, yielding a significant chi-square for response X strategy X source legitimacy. The results were interpreted in terms of the type of pressure or obligation that may follow from each strategy.