Fair Market Ideology Scale

What it measures

This 25-item scale measures fair market ideology: the tendency to believe that the free market system, common business practices, and the outcomes markets produce are inherently fair, ethical, and legitimate. The first fifteen items are agreement statements about the procedural or systemic fairness of markets; the last ten describe concrete market-driven outcomes (such as demand-based price rises, downsizing, offshoring, and scarcity pricing) that respondents rate from unfair to fair. Jost, Blount, Pfeffer, and Hunyady (2003) developed it within system justification theory and administered it to seven samples of MBA students, undergraduates, and adults at U.S. universities between 2000 and 2003. MBA samples endorsed the ideology strongly, while non-business samples did not, making the scale relevant to research on business ethics, consumer reactions to pricing, and attitudes toward capitalism.

Response format

11-point scales from -5 to +5: items 1-15 rated from completely disagree to completely agree; items 16-25 rated from completely unfair to completely fair

Scale items

Procedural / systemic fairness

• The free market system is a fair system
• Common or "normal" business practices must be fair, or they would not survive
• In many markets, there is no such thing as a true "fair" market price (r)
• Ethical businesses are not as profitable as unethical businesses (r)
• The most fair economic system is a market system in which everyone is allowed to independently pursue their own economic interests
• Acting in response to market forces is not always a fair way to conduct business (r)
• The free market system is an efficient system
• The free market system has nothing to do with fairness (r)
• Acting in response to market forces is an ethical way to conduct business
• In free market systems, people tend to get the outcomes that they deserve
• The fairest outcomes result from transactions in which the buyers pay the "fair" market price
• Profitable businesses tend to be more morally responsible than unprofitable businesses
• Regulated trade is fair trade (r)
• Economic markets do not fairly reward people (r)
• Whatever price a buyer and seller agree to trade at is a fair price

Outcome fairness

• When a company raises the prices that it charges its customers for its goods, because management has obtained market research which suggests that its customers are willing to pay more, it is . . .
• When a professional athlete receives a raise because a raise has been received by another league player of comparable ability, but none the other team members receive comparable raises, it is . . .
• The fact that scarce goods tend to cost more in a free market system is . . .
• When a company downsizes in order to reduce its costs to be more competitive with rival companies, it is . . .
• When concessions at airports and concerts charge higher prices for beverages because they know that their customers have no alternatives, it is . . .
• The fact that wealthier people live in bigger homes and better neighborhoods than poorer people who cannot afford to pay the same prices is . . .
• When a company lays off higher-cost employees in the U.S. and replaces them with lower wage workers in a foreign country in order to make higher profits, it is . . .
• The fact that housing prices in Palo Alto, California are four to six times those for comparable houses in Chicago is . . .
• The fact that more educated employees tend to earn higher wages than less-educated employees is . . .
• The fact that some working families can afford to hire more household help than others is . . .

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

Usage notes & scoring

Items marked (r) are reverse-scored; outcome items (16-25) complete the stem 'it is . . .' with a rating from unfair to fair. The procedural subscale correlated .86 and .92 with the full scale (Samples 1 and 2), and the two subscales correlated .48 and .65. Shorter 15- and 6-item versions were also used (6-item version: items 1, 2, 6, 10, 12 and 14) but were less reliable, so the full 25-item version is recommended. FMI scores correlated with political conservatism in all five samples where it was measured (r = .25 to .40), economic system justification (r = .36 to .49), self-deceptive enhancement (r = .20 to .33), opposition to equality (r = .29 and .57), belief in a just world, right-wing authoritarianism (r = .27) and the minimisation of corporate scandals (r = .36). Item 23 refers to house prices in Palo Alto versus Chicago and may need localising. See also Economic System Justification Scale (ID 90471) and Confidence in the Socio-Political System (ID 1945).

Citation

Jost, J. T., Blount, S., Pfeffer, J., & Hunyady, G. (2003). Fair market ideology: Its cognitive-motivational underpinnings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 25, 53-91.

Keywords

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