This scale captures how consumers perceive brands that publicly engage in activism on social or political issues. It distinguishes two facets of that perception: whether the brand's activist engagement feels genuine and sincere, and whether the brand is seen as visibly and openly committed to its stance rather than staying quiet about it. The instrument was built across six studies moving from qualitative construct definition through item generation, purification, and cross-validation, and is designed to be non-context-specific so it can be applied to any brand engaging in activism on any controversial issue.
7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree)
Authenticity of Brand Activism
Public Commitment to Brand Activism
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Reliability was confirmed at two stages of scale purification. At the 8-item purification stage: Authenticity alpha=.922, Public Commitment alpha=.879. At final cross-validation (n=387, independent sample): Authenticity alpha=.890/CR=.936/AVE=.748; Public Commitment alpha=.863/CR=.928/AVE=.810. A two-factor CFA model fit the data well (CFI=.996, RMSEA=.029) and significantly outperformed a unidimensional alternative, confirming the two-dimension structure. The two subscales correlate moderately (r=.314), supporting their conceptual distinctness. Items are genuinely developed by the authors through focus groups, item pools, and iterative EFA/CFA purification; not adapted from a prior named scale.
Saracevic, S. and Schlegelmilch, B.B. (2024). Activist brand perception: Conceptualization, scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 180, 114732.
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