Chapter V - Antecedents and Drivers of the Compromise Effect - An Empirical
5. Discussion
113 for the HTMT statistic remained below the maximum of 0.85 and were significantly different from 1, indicating discriminant validity for the remaining constructs. After evaluating reliability and validity of the measurement model, the structural model can be assessed. Collinearity was not an issue, as all values remained below the threshold of 5 for the variance inflation factor (VIF). The assessment of the path model resulted in the finding that none of the hypothesized paths were statistically significant, although it seems noteworthy that the nearly significant constructs loss aversion (0.09, p = 0.119) and need for cognition (-0.160, p = 0.102) showed the expected effect direction (further details in Table E1).
Construct (Driver) Coefficient S.D. t-Statistic p-Values
Expertise -0.076 0.109 0.700 0.242
Loss Aversion 0.090 0.076 1.180 0.119
Need For Cognition -0.160 0.126 1.272 0.102
Promotion Focus -0.092 0.165 0.558 0.289
Need for Cognition*Promotion 0.133 0.154 0.864 0.194
Need For Cognition*Expertise -0.004 0.104 0.038 0.485
Table E 1: Effect overview of drivers the compromise effect; dependent variable: compromise effect (headphone preference); R²=0.053
114 strong preferences may diminish context effects. With only one significant compromise effect resulting from the sample, the subsequent analysis of drivers and antecedents using PLS-SEM, resulted exclusively from this product category.
The assessment of the measurement model, prior to the path analysis, indicated several issues that affected the subsequent findings. The scales used to assess need for cognition, promotion and prevention focus proved problematic. While, with the exception of prevention focus, all scales showed sufficient reliability, all three measurement tools initially performed poorly with respect to validity tests. The low shared variance among items within their respective construct was attributed to the occurrence of a method bias. By removing negatively worded items, the issues with the need for cognition and prevention focus scale were remedied, however, the performance of the prevention focus scale could not be improved and it had to be omitted in subsequent analyses. Pre-tests conducted in German indicated problems similar to those found in the present study with regard to the measurement tools employed. The present study is therefore a first effort to rule out culture and language induced bias as an explanation for poor measurement results. As the problems persist in near-identical from, the cultural component seems to be negligible here, rather the present findings suggest the need to review established measurement scales in general in future research.
With one scale omitted due to reliability and validity issues and others greatly altered from their original form, the potential findings of the present study were cut short in general. The PLS-SEM analysis resulted in no significant paths for any of the posted hypotheses. Since the present research paper is founded on previous observations in the field of context effect research, the results of the analysis may in part be attributable to the small size of the mean compromise effect and little variance in the present study, possibly a consequence of strong prior preferences (Huber et al., 2014). Since the scales used to assess the hypothesized antecedents of the compromise effect had to be greatly altered from their original from, presently, little can be concluded from the lack of support for the hypothesized relationships, as the shortened scales might suffer from insufficient construct validity (DeVellis, 2011), i.e. the scales might have lost the ability to collect information crucial to the intended construct along with the deleted items.
With only one statistically significant compromise effect of small size to begin with and the poor performance of the measurement scales that were employed, implications for research
115 are broad with respect to measurement research, highlighting the need for a review of measurement scales. However, the implications concerning the intended subject of this study are limited. With regard to the drivers and antecedents of compromise effects, only conceptual links could be established successfully. The empirical analysis of the relative impact of individual drivers and potential interaction between them falls short of generating empirical evidence for the hypothesized effects in consequence of the problems in the measurement of the relevant constructs.
116 Appendix E
Appendix E I
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