A critique of “Response Bias” in the tourism, travel and hospitality research

• Published in: Tourism management (1982) 2017-04, Vol.59, p.376-384
• Main Author: Yüksel, Atila
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Citer myopia; Research limitation; Response behavior; Response bias
• ISSN: 0261-5177; 1879-3193
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2016.08.003

Measurement accuracy of respondents' opinions, perceptions, attitudes and behaviors is vital for better managerial suggestions, theoretical conclusions and advancement of science. There is a growing concern, voiced frequently in other disciplines that a high rate of response bias exists and this casts serious doubts on generalizability of conclusions. Based on limited research on the topic, this paper examines the extent to which response bias is acknowledged as a limitation in tourism, travel and hospitality research. Additional analyses were carried out to explore i) researchers' attentiveness to cautions when citing a biased study and ii) editorial policies of journals against bias. The results revealed that i) acknowledgement of response bias was low, ii) that researchers’ negligence to reported response bias limitations was high, and iii) that editorial policies of the examined journals were far from encouraging authors to discuss and include response bias related limitations. Implications were discussed. •We examined response bias in leading tourism, travel and hospitality journals.•We identified that response bias was not properly acknowledged.•We identified citer myopia with serious repercussions on scientific progress.•We found that the issue of bias was not taken as seriously as it should be by the editors.