Consumer autonomy: A strategy to alleviate the self-serving bias in tourism value co-creation

Abstract

Although consumers are increasingly collaborating with service providers to create value in the tourism industry, the potential for self-serving bias (i.e., taking credit or deflecting blame onto others) can be detrimental to co-creation. There is a lack of research addressing how such unproductive effects can be reduced from the perspective of consumer autonomy. To bridge this gap, this study investigates the consumer self-serving bias effect and the mitigating role of autonomy within four scenario-based experiments. Our findings reveal that consumers demonstrate self-serving bias when they are involved in the co-creation process. This bias can be significantly reduced when consumers have autonomy of whether and what to co-create. The study also shows that autonomy of with whom to co-create, does not reduce self-serving bias. This study extends the consumer autonomy and value co-creation literature in tourism services and offers practical insights into the effective management of value co-creation.