Should the risk of social desirability bias in survey studies be assessed at the level of each pro-environmental behaviour?

Oscar Yuheng Zhu; Danyelle Greene; Sara Dolnicar

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2024.104933

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Should the risk of social desirability bias in survey studies be assessed at the level of each pro-environmental behaviour?

Journal article

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Peer reviewed

Should the risk of social desirability bias in survey studies be assessed at the level of each pro-environmental behaviour?

Oscar Yuheng Zhu, Danyelle Greene and Sara Dolnicar

Tourism management, Vol.104

2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2024.104933

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Abstract

Befragung

Systematischer Fehler

Umweltbewusstsein

Social desirability bias is the tendency of individuals to over-report behaviour viewed favourably by society, such as environmentally sustainable behaviour. The currently prevalent approach to managing social desirability bias in survey studies is to include a set of additional questions to determine a respondent's person-specific social desirability bias, which can also be used as a correction factor. Yet, the pooled correlation between person-specific social desirability and self-reported pro-environmental behaviour is weak. Our study challenges the currently dominant approach. We propose an alternative approach that uses a behaviour-specific indicator. The behaviour-specific indicator captures the social evaluation of the behaviour and perceived embarrassment when admitting to the behaviour. The analysis of the associations between person-specific and behaviour-specific social desirability bias indicators and 11 self-reported behaviours suggests that the behaviour-specific approach has a higher ability to alert researchers to the risk of socially desirable responding in self-report survey studies.

Details

Title: Should the risk of social desirability bias in survey studies be assessed at the level of each pro-environmental behaviour?
Authors/Creators: Oscar Yuheng Zhu
Danyelle Greene
Sara Dolnicar
Publication Details: Tourism management, Vol.104
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
Number of pages: 6
Identifiers: 991005881353107891
Murdoch Affiliation: School of Psychology
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

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Citation topics: 6 Social Sciences; 6.73 Social Psychology; 6.73.1507 Pro-environmental Behavior
Web Of Science research areas: Environmental Studies; Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism; Management
ESI research areas: Social Sciences, general