Overstating and understating interaction results in international business research

Allison F. Kingsley, Thomas G. Noordewier and Richard G. Vanden Bergh

Journal of World Business, 2017, vol. 52, issue 2, 286-295

Abstract: Approximately one-third of international business (IB) articles include conditional hypotheses, yet the vast majority risk errors in testing or interpreting the results. Scholars typically restrict their empirical analysis to the coefficient of the interaction term in the regression, exposing themselves to the hazard of overstating or understating results. To mitigate the risk of misstating, we advocate that IB scholars also evaluate the statistical significance of the marginal effect of the primary independent variable over the range of values of the moderating variable. We demonstrate that overstating results can occur when the interaction term coefficient is statistically significant but the marginal effect is not significantly different from zero for some value(s) of the moderating variable. Understating can occur when the interaction term coefficient is not statistically significant, but the marginal effect is statistically different from zero for some value(s) of the moderating variable. In this article, we describe, using simulated data, these two possibilities associated with testing conditional hypotheses, and offer practical guidance for IB scholars.

Keywords: Research methods; Interactions; Conditional hypotheses; Moderating variables; Marginal effect; Regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951616302875
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:worbus:v:52:y:2017:i:2:p:286-295

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 620401/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2016.12.010

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of World Business is currently edited by David Collings and Jonathan Doh

More articles in Journal of World Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().