The Best–Worst Scaling Approach: An Alternative to Schwartz's Values Survey

Traditional self-report ratings have some measurement problems that a relatively new method, best–worst scaling (BWS; Finn & Louviere, 1992 Finn, A. and Louviere, J. J. 1992. Determining the appropriate response to evidence of public concern: The case of food safety. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing., 11: 19–25. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), may overcome. This alternative method, based on Louviere's BWS, can be used to measure the relative importance or perceived trade-offs among choice alternatives. The method is illustrated as an alternative to the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS; Schwartz, 1992 Schwartz, S. H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology., 25: 1–65. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In a series of samples, it was found that Schwartz values best–worst survey (SVBWS) reproduced Schwartz's (1992 Schwartz, S. H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology., 25: 1–65. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) theoretical value structure and supported hypothesized relationships between values and value-expressive behaviors, ethnocentrism, and environmental-related tourism activities. In addition, the SVBWS approach took significantly less respondent time than the traditional SVS approach.