Measuring consumer attitudes using text highlighting: Methodological considerations

Abstract

Direct attitude questions occupy a central position in consumer research despite concerns over validity and reliability. Text highlighting is an alternative method where participants use highlighter functions to indicate content that they 'ike' and 'dislike' as they read a text. Jaeger et al. (2022) [Food Qual Prefer, 95, 104356] introduced this approach and the present research investigated it methodologically to further assess its potential for attitude measurement. There were two research questions (RQ) that asked whether: 1) highlighting responses are independent of text characteristics (length, content); and 2) consumers’ attitudes are altered by the process of completing the highlighting task. Data were collected in an online survey on vertical farming (VF) where 1466 UK consumers took part. For RQ1, results showed that word highlighting frequency was altered by textual context and decreased for longer texts. The sentiment scores for sentences were also altered, but the characteristics about VF that consumers responded positively and negatively to were minimally influenced by text length and content. For RQ2, results showed that completion of the text highlighting task did not influence attitudes to VF, meaning that the task of highlighting did not introduce response bias. Collectively, the findings of the present research further support that text highlighting has potential for attitude measurement.