Haptic Sensation of One's Hands in the Video (Body Ownership)

What it measures

This scale, which Luangrath et al. (2022) referred to as body ownership, measures a person's feeling that the hands shown in a video are his or her own hands while viewing an advertisement. A five-item version was used in some studies and a four-item version (omitting the fifth item) in studies with a "no hand" condition. Although the authors described the measure as adapted from Botvinick and Cohen (1998), the two sets of items are conceptually similar but differ enough that it is more precise to describe this scale as created by Luangrath et al. (2022), drawing inspiration from that earlier rubber-hand-illusion research.

Response format

7-point Likert (Strongly disagree to Strongly agree)

Scale items

• I felt as though I, personally, was reaching out.
• I felt as though my hand was moving.
• My own hands seemed to be in the video.
• I felt as if my hands were in the video.
• I felt as if the hand in the advertisement was my hand.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Alphas were provided for all seven studies in the main article and two of the seven web-appendix studies, ranging from .90 to .98 across the nine reported administrations (Luangrath et al. 2022, web appendix, pp. 28, 51, 56). Validity was not discussed per se, but the scale was used as a successful manipulation check in Study 4, offering preliminary support for predictive validity. Item 5 was not used in studies with a "no hand" condition (four-item version). Not a true item-level adaptation of Botvinick and Cohen (1998) — see About section.

Citation

Luangrath, Andrea Webb, Joann Peck, William Hedgcock, and Yixiang Xu (2022), "Observing Product Touch: The Vicarious Haptic Effect in Digital Marketing and Virtual Reality," Journal of Marketing Research, 59 (2), 306-326.

Keywords