Corporations sometimes do things not always in the best interest of consumers, society, and the environment. In response, consumers have increasingly come together to hold corporations accountable for their unethical practices (brand transgressions) through a multitude of activist-like behaviors. When companies transgress, consumers may turn to their shopping bags and social media accounts, among other forms of online and offline action, to stand against unethical corporate practices, commonly called consumer activism. The study of personal goals as a motivational driver has gained growing attention among consumer activism scholars. However, knowledge advancement is hindered by the need for a reliable and valid scale that can measure consumer activists’ personally motivated goals. Extant measures have some critical limitations. First, they were developed in the context of boycotting only, which limits their application to other activist-like behaviors. Second, they conflated different motivational constructs, creating problems of content and construct validity. Third, extant measures were proposed without systematically investigating construct breadth and dimensionality. This is a crucial step in scale development because it increases researchers’ confidence that relevant personal goals have been adequately identified and translated into a measurement protocol. This dissertation addresses these limitations by proposing a measurement scale of consumer activism personal goals that observes best practices in scale development in the social sciences. This process starts with an in-depth, interdisciplinary literature review on consumer activism that culminates with conceptualizing consumer activism as a goal-oriented behavior directed against a company concerning an issue of personal relevance. In addition, a typological model of consumer activism is proposed – the 6 Ps of Consumer Activism. Subsequently, the scale is developed through a multi-study design. Study 1 aims to 1) investigate the theoretical breadth of the construct and its dimensions and 2) generate an initial pool of measurement items. This is accomplished through in-depth interviews with consumer activists, a panel discussion with experts, and cognitive interviews with consumer activists. Study 2 focuses on assessing the latent structure of the measurement scale via EFA. Finally, Study 3 provides additional statistical support concerning the final measurement protocol via CFA and measurement validity assessment. As a result, a 20-item measurement scale is proposed to indicate five personally motivated goals of consumer activists – the Consumer Activism Motivation Scale (CAMS). The CAMS can help researchers and practitioners in predicting various behavioral and perceptual outcomes in the context of consumer activism.
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