A three-item, seven-point Likert-type scale measuring the anxiety a consumer experiences in anticipation of purchasing a specific product. Each item uses a flexible stem with a blank to be filled with the name of the focal product category, allowing the scale to be applied across a wide range of purchase contexts. Developed and used in Study 3 of a four-experiment investigation into how psychological distance modulates the subjective experience of task difficulty, including the anxiety associated with making complex or unfamiliar purchase decisions. Two-item versions of the scale (excluding the 'nervous' item) were used in the article's earlier studies to capture anxiety in non-purchase contexts, with the full three-item version reserved for the purchase scenario.
7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree); product category name inserted in each item blank
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
The scale is intentionally generic in structure: the product category is substituted into the blank in each item (e.g., 'I feel anxious about purchasing a laptop'). This makes it highly adaptable across product and service categories. The scale is conceptually related to but narrower than general anxiety measures in the database (e.g., ID 1911, Anxiety General; ID 1379, Anxiety). It is also distinct from service-usage anxiety (ID 1912) and technological anxiety scales (IDs 1084, 1913, 1914). No formal validity assessment was reported by the authors beyond the scale's successful use as a moderator variable; the manipulation of psychological distance significantly reduced purchase anxiety in the predicted direction, providing some evidence of sensitivity and construct relevance. A two-item version (anxious, worried) was used in Studies 1A and 1B for non-purchase anxiety.
Thomas, M., & Tsai, C.I. (2012). Psychological distance and subjective experience: How distancing reduces the feeling of difficulty. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 324-340.
Free access to 2455+ psychometric scales at PsychScales