Correcting for Scale Perception Bias in Tourist Satisfaction Surveys

Abstract

Tourist satisfaction analysis provides important information that contributes to design public and private policies in tourist services and destinations. However, the responses to tourist satisfaction scales can lead to biased results when comparing tourists from different nationalities and backgrounds, since they might use different internal scale interpretations to assess their satisfaction level in a survey. In this article, the anchoring vignette methodology is used to test and correct for scale response bias in tourist satisfaction surveys. The results of the empirical application find out that scale response is not homogeneous across tourists from different nationalities and that the correction for scale differences can lead to an evaluation of tourist satisfaction that more accurately informs and facilitates improvements in policy decisions at tourist destinations and operators.