Position bias in best-worst scaling surveys: a case study on trust in institutions

Danny Campbell () and Seda Erdem

No 177167, 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of physical position on ‘best’ and ‘worst’ choices in the bestworst scaling technique. Although the best-worst scaling technique has been used widely in many fields, the phenomenon of consumers’ adoption of processing strategies while making choices has been largely overlooked. We examine this issue in the context of consumers’ perception of trust in institutions to provide information about a new food technology, namely nanotechnology, and its use in food processing. Our results show that around half of the consumers used position as a schematic cue when making choices. We find the position bias is particularly strong when consumers chose their most trustworthy institution compared to their least trustworthy institution. In light of our findings, we recommend researchers in the field to 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.

Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Journal Article: Position Bias in Best-worst Scaling Surveys: A Case Study on Trust in Institutions (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea14:177167

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.177167

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