Animosity Toward Outsourced Countries Scale

What it measures

A three-item scale measuring the degree to which consumers believe that countries receiving outsourced work from their home country are gaining an unfair competitive advantage through lower labour costs. The scale captures a form of economic animosity directed not at a specific foreign nation but at offshoring destination countries as a category, reflecting moral judgments about fairness in international labour and trade. Developed for use in two field experiments with Italian adult consumers (Study 1: N=325; Study 2: N=407), the scale was adapted from a four-item animosity measure developed for the outsourcing context, and was embedded in a broader theoretical framework linking perceived moral harm from offshoring to consumer attitudes and word-of-mouth behaviour. The parent study demonstrated that perceptions of moral harm from offshoring — mediated by negative moral emotions — negatively affected consumer attitudes toward offshoring companies.

Response format

7-point Likert (assumed; anchors not reported in source article)

Scale items

• Outsourced countries are trading unfairly with our country because they take advantage of lower labor costs.
• Outsourced countries are unfairly taking advantage of their low labor costs, selling their products and services at low prices and putting our country out of the market.
• Our country is more fair in its trade dealing with the outsourced countries than those countries are with ours.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The scale is conceptually related to but distinct from the Consumer Animosity Scale (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998; ID 234), which measures animosity rooted in war or historical conflict with a specific named country. The ATOS targets generalised animosity toward outsourcing-recipient countries as a class, grounded in perceptions of labour cost exploitation rather than historical grievance. Also related to the Consumer Sentiment toward Offshored Services Scale (Thelen, Yoo, & Magnini; ID 1895), which captures protective sentiment about domestic job losses; the ATOS focuses more specifically on the perceived unfairness of labour cost arbitrage. Reliability was reported only for Study 1 (alpha = .90); Study 2 reliability was not stated. Convergent and discriminant validity were supported across both studies, and common method variance was assessed and deemed not a threat. Survey instruments were back-translated (English-Italian) and verified. Items were adapted from a prior four-item measure by Durvasula & Lysonski (2009), which itself drew on Klein et al. (1998).

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Grappi, S., Romani, S., & Bagozzi, R.P. (2013). The effects of company offshoring strategies on consumer responses. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(6), 683-704.

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