The survey analysis shows that the percentage of men considering the possibility of joining the SMO is quite high. Aggregating all respondent categories — current SMO personnel, those willing to extend their contract, and those willing to join with or without certain conditions — reveals that 39% of all respondents are open to participation, while 61% state their unwillingness (Table 8). At that, the core of the willing category is made up of the current personnel (9% who are ready to continue service), and 13% of those who expressed willingness to join even before discussing the terms, amounting to a total of 22%.
Thus, the estimate of 13% likely overstates the proportion of men genuinely willing to join the SMO. Taking another look at the active SMO personnel, who make up 16% of the sample, only a little over half of them (57%) are willing to extend their contracts. Similarly, it is not unreasonable to assume that not all of the 13% of respondents who stated their willingness to join before discussing the conditions are actually ready to sign a contract, bringing it down to around 6% of the sample.
Even considering all of the distorting effects, the extent of the distortion cannot be determined methodologically and falls within the realm of evaluative judgments. The authors estimate that the actual exaggeration is likely to be in the range of two to three times the actual number of individuals willing to join the SMO. However, even assuming that the sampling characteristics inflated the number of responses indicating willingness to join the SMO by a factor of five or more, the data still suggests that millions of Russian men are either willing or actively planning to participate in combat.
The observation regarding the prevalence of ideological incentives (opinions of relatives and SMO personnel) over the material ones requires careful interpretation, as this result is influenced by the effect of socially desirable responses. Only 2% of the respondents in the entire sample admitted that purely material incentives could affect their decision to join the SMO. There is no doubt that, in reality, the proportion of individuals for whom financial incentives are decisive is far higher than those 2% who reported so. Otherwise, we should have seen a much higher turnout at military recruitment centers. It is important to recognize the complexity of respondents’ motivations. Without ideological incentives, the financial stimulus alone would likely be less effective. Some individuals driven mainly by financial incentives may also convince themselves that socially esteemed motives are significant. A noteworthy observation is that the demographic that is “unconditionally willing” to join the SMO reports average payment estimates that are closer to the payments currently offered in Moscow. By contrast, the “conditionally willing” respondents more frequently cited payment amounts either higher or lower than the Moscow offer. This suggests that the “unconditionally willing” group is better informed about the actual payment levels and is, therefore, more likely to represent the core of potential contract combatants in the SMO, the target group of this study. It is also confirmed that among those eyeing signing a contract, material incentives play a more significant role as opposed to to those who have not seriously contemplated joining the SMO and responded to the interviewers’ questions in more general terms.