The PAD Emotional State Scale is the foundational three-dimensional model of emotional experience in environmental psychology and the most widely applied emotional state measure in consumer and retail behaviour research. Mehrabian and Russell (1974) proposed that emotional responses to environments — and by extension to products, brands, and marketing stimuli — can be fully described along three orthogonal dimensions: Pleasure (feeling good, joyful, satisfied), Arousal (feeling stimulated, alert, excited), and Dominance (feeling in control, dominant, able to act freely). The PAD framework generated the highly influential S-O-R model in retail atmospherics (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982). PAD dimensions mediate the effects of store design, background music, scent, lighting, and colour on approach/avoidance behaviour, time spent in-store, and purchase amount.
9-point semantic differential (–4 to +4 or coded 1–9); 18 bipolar adjective pairs, 6 per dimension; dimensions averaged separately
Pleasure — P (6 items): valence of emotional state; extent of positive hedonic tone. 9-point semantic differential (–4 to +4). Items averaged; code so high pleasure pole = +4.
Arousal — A (6 items): activation level of emotional state; extent of alertness and stimulation. 9-point semantic differential. Items averaged.
Dominance — D (6 items): sense of personal control and autonomy in the environment. 9-point semantic differential. Items averaged.
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Compute mean of 6 items per dimension after coding so high-positive-affect pole = +4 (or 9 in 1–9 coding). Many retail atmosphere studies use only Pleasure and Arousal dimensions, excluding Dominance due to weaker predictive validity in consumer contexts. The PAD is a state measure, not a trait measure — items refer to how the person feels right now in response to a specific stimulus. Follow Donovan and Rossiter (1982, Journal of Retailing) operationalisation for retail applications. Distinguish from the PAD Trait Measure (Mehrabian, 1996) which assesses dispositional temperament.
Mehrabian, A., & Russell, J.A. (1974). An approach to environmental psychology. MIT Press.
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