Abstract
While questionnaires are still the most common way to survey consumers’ behaviors, it is known that respondents’ answers can be affected by the social desirability attributed to the behavior under investigation. To check whether a social desirability bias also affects electricity consumption self-reports, a study was carried out adopting an explicit (questionnaire) and implicit measurement technique (the autobiographical Implicit Association Test). Three behaviors were probed in this way, with a sample of 180 participants (60 for each behavior). The analysis of the congruence between explicit and implicit answers confirms that desirability bias is at stake in self-reported measures of electricity conservation; it also shows that different behaviors—in this same domain—can be subject to this bias to a different extent and that a considerable amount of participants need to be considered as ambivalent. The methodological and conceptual implications of these findings and of the method are discussed with respect to pro-environmental studies and interventions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A demo page with several different IATs is offered at this URL: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
The D index includes a penalty for incorrect trials and expresses the IAT effect (the difference in performance between the two double-categorization blocks) in terms of the standard deviation of the latency measures. It is calculated by subtracting corrected mean RTs in the fifth block from mean RTs in the third block and then dividing the result by the inclusive standard deviation of the two blocks.
References
Agosta S., Sartori G. (2013) The autobiographical IAT: A review. Frontiers of Psychology, 4, article n. 00519, retrieved from http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00519/full.
Antil, J. H. (1979). Construction and validation of a scale to measure socially responsible consumption behavior. In K. E. Hennion II & T. C. Kinnear (Eds.), The conserver society. Chicago: Proceeding Series, American Marketing Association.
Bain, P. G., Hornsey, M. J., Bongiorno, R., & Jeffries, C. (2012). Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers. Nature Climate Change, 2(8), 600–603.
Bamberg, S. (2003). How does environmental concern influence specific environmentally related behaviors? A new answer to an old question. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, 21–32.
Chung, J., & Monroe, G. S. (2003). Exploring social desirability bias. Journal of Business Ethics, 44(4), 291–302.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral science (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Corral-Verdugo, V. (1997). Dual ‘realities’ of conservation behavior: Self-reports vs observations of re-use and recycling behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17(2), 135–145.
Crossley, N. (2013). Habit and habitus. Body and Society, 19(2&3), 136–161.
Darby, S. (2006). The effectiveness of feedback on energy consumption. A review for DEFRA of the literature on metering, billing, and direct displays. Last accessed on November 2011 from: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/smart-metering-report.pdf.
Dasgupta, N., Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). The First Ontological Challenge to the IAT: Attitude or Mere Familiarity? Psychological Inquiry, 14(3–4), 238–243.
De Groot, J. I. M., & Steg, L. (2010). Relationships between value orientations, self-determined motivational types and pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(4), 368–378.
De Young, R. (1986). Some psychological aspects of recycling. The structure of conservation satisfaction. Environment and Behavior, 18, 435–449.
De Young, R. (1991). Some psychological aspects of living lightly: Desired lifestyle patterns and conservation behavior. Journal of Environmental Systems, 20(3), 215–227.
De, H., De Houwer, J., Teige-Mocigemba, S., Spruyt, A., & Moors. (2009). Implicit measures: A normative analysis and review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(3), 347–368.
Donders, F. C. (1969). On the speed of mental processes. Acta Psychologica, 30, 413-431. (Original paper published in 1868).
Ebreo, A. & Vining, J. (1994). Conservation-wise consumers: Recycling and household shopping as ecological behavior. Journal of Environmental Systems, 23, 109-131. *
Fazio, R. H. (1990). Multiple processes by which attitudes guide behavior: The MODE model as an integrative framework. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 75–109). New York: Academic Press.
Fazio, R. H., & Olson, M. A. (2003). Implicit measures in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297–327.
Fielder, K., Messner, C., & Bluemke, M. (2006). Unresolved problems with the “I”, the “A”, and the “T”: A logical and psychometric critique of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). European Review of Social Psychology, 17, 74–147.
Fischer, C. (2008). Feedback on household electricity consumption: A tool for saving energy? Energy Efficiency, 1(1), 79–104.
Fisher, R. J. (1993). Social desirability bias and the validity of indirect questioning. The Journal of Consumer Research, 20(2), 303–315.
Froehlich J., Findlater L., & Landay J. (2010). The design of eco-feedback technology. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '10), (pp. 1999–2008). New York: ACM.
Goldenhar, L. M., & Connell, C. M. (1993). Understanding and predicting recycling behavior: An application of the theory of reasoned action. Journal of Environmental Systems, 22, 91–103.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464–1480.
Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 197–216.
Hirst, E., & Goeltz, R. (1985). Accuracy of self-reports: Energy conservation surveys. The Social Science Journal, 22(1), 19–30.
Kantola, S. J., Syme, G. J., & Campbell, N. A. (1984). Cognitive dissonance and energy conservation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(3), 416–421.
Kelley, K. (2005). The effects of nonnormal distributions on confidence intervals around the standardized mean difference: bootstrap and parametric confidence intervals. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65(1), 51–69.
Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002). Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research, 8(3), 239–260.
Levy, S. J. (1981). Interpreting consumer mythology: A structural approach to consumer behavior. Journal of Marketing, 45, 49–61.
Linn, N., Vining, J., & Feeley, P. (1994). Toward a sustainable society: Waste minimization through environmentally conscious consuming. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(17), 1550–1572.
McConahay, J. B., Hardee, B. B., & Batts, V. (1981). Has racism declined in America? It depends on who is asking and what is asked. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 25(4), 563–579.
McGuire, W. J. (1986). The vicissitudes of attitudes and similar representational constructs in twentieth century psychology. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 89–130.
Murphy, P., Laczniac, G. R., & Robinson, R. K. (1979). An attitudinal and behavioral index of energy conservation. In K. E. Henion II & T. C. Kinnear (Eds.), The Conserver Society. Chicago: Proceeding Series, American Marketing Association.
Nocera, F., & Ferlazzo, F. (2000). Resampling approach to statistical inference: Bootstrapping from event-related potentials data. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 32(1), 111–119.
Parker, R. I. (2006). Increased reliability for single-case research results: is the bootstrap the answer? Behavior Therapy, 37(4), 326–338.
Peltier, B. D., & Walsh, J. A. (1990). An investigation of response bias in the Chapman Scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 50(4), 803–815.
Pierce, J., Strengers, Y., Sengers, P., and Bødker, S. 2013. Introduction to the special issue on practice-oriented approaches to sustainable HCI. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 20, 4, Article 20 (September 2013), 8 pages
Robinette, R. L. (1991). The relationship between the Marlowe-Crowne Form C and the validity scales of the MMPI. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 47(3), 396–399.
Sartori, G., Agosta, S., Zogmaister, C., Ferrara, S. D., & Castiello, U. (2008). How to accurately detect autobiographical events. Psychological Science, 19(8), 772–780.
Simon, J., & Simon, R. (1975). The effect of money incentives on family size: A hypothetical-question study. Public Opinion Quarterly, 38, 585–595.
Suchman, L., & Jordan, B. (1992). Validity and the collaborative construction of meaning in face-to-face surveys. In J. Tanur (Ed.), Questions about Questions: Inquiries into the Cognitive Bases of Surveys (pp. 241–267). New York, NY: Russell Sage.
Tracy, A. P., & Oskamp, S. (1984). Relationship among ecologically responsible behaviors. Journal of Environmental Systems, 13(2), 115–126.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232.
Uhlmann, E. L., Poehlman, T. A., & Nosek, B. A. (2012). Automatic associations: Personal attitudes or cultural knowledge? In J. Hanson (Ed.), Ideology, Psychology, and Law (pp. 228–260). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Van Raaij, W. F., & Verhallen, T. M. (1983). A behavioral model of residential energy use. Journal of Economic Psychology, 3(1), 39–63.
Whitford, J. (2002). Pragmatism and the untenable dualism of means and ends: why rational choice theory does not deserve paradigmatic privilege. Theory and Society, 31, 325–363.
Whitley, E. E., & Kite, M. E. (2010). The psychology of prejudice and discrimination. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Whitmarsh, L., & O’Neill, S. (2010). Green identity, green living? The role of pro-environmental self-identity in determining consistency across diverse pro-environmental behaviours. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(3), 305–314.
Woods, J. (2008). What people do when they say they are conserving electricity. Energy Policy, 36(6), 1945–1956.
Zerbe, W. J., & Paulhus, D. L. (1987). Socially desirable responding in organizational behavior: A reconception. The Academy of Management Review, 12(2), 250–264.
Acknowledgments
This work has been co-funded by the European Union (EU FP7/ICT-2007.6.3, project no. 224557 'BeAware', http://energyawareness.eu). The authors would also like to thank the “Museo Antoniano” and two public libraries, “Brenta-Venezia” and “Emeroteca,” in Padua, for hosting the data collection, and their visitors for participating in the study. They also would like to thank Giulia Bosetti and Pietro Zappaterra for helping in the data collection and Francesco Martino for advising on an earlier version of the work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gamberini, L., Spagnolli, A., Corradi, N. et al. Combining implicit and explicit techniques to reveal social desirability bias in electricity conservation self-reports. Energy Efficiency 7, 923–935 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-014-9266-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-014-9266-6