IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mnh/spaper/2603.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measures of desirability beliefs and their validity as indicators for socially desirable responding

Author

Listed:
  • Stocké, Volker
  • Hunkler, Christian

Abstract

Social desirability (SD)-bias is a serious threat for survey-data quality, and the respondents’ desirability beliefs have proven in many studies to predict the incentives for the strength as well as for the direction of this bias. However, the issue of the relative validity of different ways to measure these incentives has hardly received any attention. We introduced three such measures and discussed the respective tradeoffs between their parsimony on the one hand and the implied assumptions which have to be fulfilled on the other. In the empirical part of our paper, we tested with four questionnaire topics whether and how strong these assumptions are violated and thus how much measurement effort is necessary to obtain a sufficiently good indicator for the perceived incentives for SD-bias. These topics were: (a) having prejudice against the elderly, (b) making charitable donations, (c) participating in political elections and (d) being environmentally conscious. We found the most parsimonious one-point measure to be strongly affected by measurement error in the case of all questionnaire topics. Depending on how strong the assumption of monotony was violated, for some topics the medium elaborated simple difference scores were sufficiently valid, but partly only the most elaborated domain-specific difference scores were a valid predictor for the potential strength and direction of incentives for SD-bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Stocké, Volker & Hunkler, Christian, 2006. "Measures of desirability beliefs and their validity as indicators for socially desirable responding," Papers 06-03, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    • Handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2603/1/dp06_03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernandes, Maria F. & Randall, Donna M., 1992. "The Nature of Social Desirability Response Effects in Ethics Research," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 183-205, April.
    2. Stocké, Volker & Stark, Tobias, 2006. "Political involvement and memory failure as interdependent determinants of vote overreporting," Papers 06-01, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    3. Robert G. Ethier & Gregory L. Poe & William D. Schulze & Jeremy Clark, 2000. "Comparison of Hypothetical Phone and Mail Contingent Valuation Responses for Green-Pricing Electricity Programs," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(1), pages 54-67.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maria Loureiro & Justus Lotade, 2005. "Interviewer Effects on the Valuation of Goods with Ethical and Environmental Attributes," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 30(1), pages 49-72, January.
    2. Watson, Sharon & Weaver, Gary R., 2003. "How internationalization affects corporate ethics: formal structures and informal management behavior," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 75-93.
    3. Mark Morrison & Thomas Brown, 2009. "Testing the Effectiveness of Certainty Scales, Cheap Talk, and Dissonance-Minimization in Reducing Hypothetical Bias in Contingent Valuation Studies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 44(3), pages 307-326, November.
    4. Glenn Bush & Nick Hanley & Mirko Moro & Daniel Rondeau, 2013. "Measuring the Local Costs of Conservation: A Provision Point Mechanism for Eliciting Willingness to Accept Compensation," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 89(3), pages 490-513.
    5. Chengyan Yue & Ben Campbell & Charles Hall & Bridget Behe & Jennifer Dennis & Hayk Khachatryan, 2016. "Consumer Preference for Sustainable Attributes in Plants: Evidence from Experimental Auctions," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 222-235, April.
    6. Lindhjem, Henrik & Navrud, Ståle, 2008. "Internet CV surveys – a cheap, fast way to get large samples of biased values?," MPRA Paper 11471, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Arnab Mitra & Michael R. Moore, 2018. "Green Electricity Markets as Mechanisms of Public-Goods Provision: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(1), pages 45-71, September.
    8. Larissa Schütte & Diana Gregory-Smith, 2015. "Neutralisation and Mental Accounting in Ethical Consumption: The Case of Sustainable Holidays," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-14, June.
    9. Mewton, Ross T. & Cacho, Oscar J., 2011. "Green Power voluntary purchases: Price elasticity and policy analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 377-385, January.
    10. Davis, Jennifer, 2004. "Assessing Community Preferences for Development Projects: Are Willingness-to-Pay Studies Robust to Mode Effects?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 655-672, April.
    11. An, Li & Lupi, Frank & Liu, Jianguo & Linderman, Marc A. & Huang, Jinyan, 2002. "Modeling the choice to switch from fuelwood to electricity: Implications for giant panda habitat conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 445-457, September.
    12. Saira Begum & Muhammad Ashfaq & Enjun Xia & Usama Awan, 2022. "Does green transformational leadership lead to green innovation? The role of green thinking and creative process engagement," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 580-597, January.
    13. Abul Hassan, 2008. "Secondary Databases and their Use in Research in Islamic Economics استخدام قواعد البيانات الثانوية في البحث في الاقتصاد الإسلامي," Papers and books based on the proceedings of the Conferences organized by the Islamic Economics Institute, KAAU. 46, King Abdulaziz University, Islamic Economics Institute..
    14. Roberta Bampton & Christopher Cowton, 2013. "Taking Stock of Accounting Ethics Scholarship: A Review of the Journal Literature," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 549-563, May.
    15. Sarah Elena Windolph & Dorli Harms & Stefan Schaltegger, 2014. "Motivations for Corporate Sustainability Management: Contrasting Survey Results and Implementation," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(5), pages 272-285, September.
    16. Morteza Chalak & David J. Pannell, 2015. "Optimal Integrated Strategies to Control an Invasive Weed," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 63(3), pages 381-407, September.
    17. Hermann Donfouet & P. Jeanty & P.-A. Mahieu, 2014. "Dealing with internal inconsistency in double-bounded dichotomous choice: an application to community-based health insurance," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 317-328, February.
    18. Frommeyer, Britta & Wagner, Elisa & Hossiep, C. Richard & Schewe, Gerhard, 2022. "The utility of intention as a proxy for sustainable buying behavior – A necessary condition analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 201-213.
    19. Christian A. Vossler & Robert G. Ethier & Gregory L. Poe & Michael P. Welsh, 2003. "Payment Certainty in Discrete Choice Contingent Valuation Responses: Results from a Field Validity Test," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 886-902, April.
    20. Nick Hanley & Felix Schlapfer, "undated". "Calibration of Stated Willingness to Pay for Public Goods with Voting and Tax Liability Data: Provision of Landscape Amenities in Switzerland," Working Papers 2002_2, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2603. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Katharina Rautenberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfmande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.