Internet Involvement Scale

What it measures

A four-item Likert-type scale measuring a person's belief that they use, understand, and are interested in the internet more than most other people. The construct is labelled 'internet affinity' by Schumann, von Wangenheim, and Groene (2014), capturing relative self-assessed internet engagement as a stable individual-difference characteristic. The scale was originally developed in German using back-translation from an English source version, drawing some concepts and phrasing from Neelamegham and Jain (1999). It was used in Study 1 of Schumann et al. (2014) to examine whether internet-involved consumers respond differently to reciprocity appeals for targeted online advertising. Alpha = .85 and AVE = .62 indicate good reliability and acceptable convergent validity. Discriminant validity from related digital engagement constructs was demonstrated by the authors.

Scale items

• I use the Internet more often than other people do.
• I am interested in the Internet.
• I am experienced in using the Internet.
• In general, the Internet is important for me.

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

Usage notes & scoring

The items listed reflect the English originals from which the German administration version was derived via back-translation. Researchers using this scale in English should treat the English version as the primary instrument. The AVE of .62 is at the lower end of acceptable but above the conventional .50 threshold. The scale's comparative framing ('more than other people', 'more often than other people') means items capture relative rather than absolute internet engagement -- distinguish from internet usage frequency or digital literacy scales when both appear in the same study. The scale was developed for the online advertising acceptance context and has been most used in digital advertising, privacy, and targeted marketing research. Neelamegham and Jain (1999) is cited as a conceptual source for some items but the full scale is new to Schumann et al. (2014).

Citation

Schumann, J. H., von Wangenheim, F., & Groene, N. (2014). Targeted online advertising: Using reciprocity appeals to increase acceptance among users of free web services. Journal of Marketing, 78(1), 59–75.