Position Bias in Best-worst Scaling Surveys: A Case Study on Trust in Institutions

Danny Campbell () and Seda Erdem

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2015, vol. 97, issue 2, 526-545

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of items' physical position in the best-worst scaling technique. Although the best-worst scaling technique has been widely used in many fields, the literature has largely overlooked the phenomenon of consumers' adoption of processing strategies while making their best-worst choices. We examine this issue in the context of consumers' trust in institutions to provide information about a new food technology, nanotechnology, and its use in food processing. Our results show that approximately half of the consumers used position as a schematic cue when making choices. We find the position bias was particularly strong when consumers chose their most trustworthy institution compared to their least trustworthy institution. In light of our findings, we recommend that researchers in the field be aware of the possibility of position bias when designing best-worst scaling surveys. We also encourage researchers who have already collected best-worst data to investigate whether their data shows such heuristics.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aau112 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Position bias in best-worst scaling surveys: a case study on trust in institutions (2014)
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:oup:ajagec:v:97:y:2015:i:2:p:526-545.

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().