Attitude Toward the Company (Social Responsibility) (ATCSR)

Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Company (Social Responsibility) (ATCSR) scale is a specialized five-item psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumer perceptions of a firm’s authentic commitment to prosocial initiatives, corporate citizenship, and societal welfare. Developed by Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Ronald W. Niedrich, and Stacy Landreth Grau in their foundational 2010 investigation published in the Journal of Retailing, the scale addresses the complex inferential mechanisms consumers deploy when interpreting corporate involvement in cause-related marketing (CRM) and broader corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. The instrument captures consumer judgments across perceived corporate altruism, ethical citizenship, priority placed on assisting stakeholders, and the perceived balance between cause-oriented benefits versus firm-centric commercial exploitation. Administered utilizing a 7-point Likert-type response format anchored from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”), the five items are averaged to generate a composite index reflecting the degree of perceived corporate social rectitude. Across empirical investigations, the ATCSR scale demonstrates robust psychometric integrity, featuring high internal consistency (Cronbach’s $\alpha ge .88$), sound composite reliability, clear unidimensional factor structure, and established convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. By capturing consumer skepticism alongside positive brand attributions, the ATCSR scale functions as a vital measurement model in consumer psychology, retail management, business ethics, and strategic marketing communications.

Keywords

Attitude Toward the Company, Corporate Social Responsibility, Cause-Related Marketing, Consumer Skepticism, Attribution Theory, Corporate Citizenship, Prosocial Marketing, Brand Attitude, Ethical Consumption, Scale Validation

Authors

The ATCSR scale was formulated and validated by a team of prominent scholars in marketing, consumer behavior, and retail strategy:

• Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Department Chair, Department of Marketing, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas (formerly at Louisiana State University). Her research focuses on firm communications, cause-related marketing, consumer gratitude, and consumer-brand relationship dynamics.
• Ronald W. Niedrich, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Department of Marketing, E. J. Ourso College of Business, Louisiana State University. His research expertise centers on reference price models, consumer memory and judgment, psychometric measurement, and retail pricing strategies.
• Stacy Landreth Grau, Ph.D. — Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Practice, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University. Her research encompasses cause-related marketing, social marketing, consumer socialization, and design thinking methodologies.

Purpose

Corporate engagement in prosocial endeavors has evolved from a discretionary public relations tactic into a core strategic imperative. However, as firms increasingly integrate social causes into their revenue-generating models—particularly within cause-related marketing (CRM) frameworks—consumers do not passively absorb these marketing communications. Instead, consumers actively generate causal inferences regarding the underlying motives driving firm behavior. The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Company (Social Responsibility) (ATCSR) scale is to measure the extent to which consumers evaluate a corporation as genuinely committed to social welfare versus motivated by self-serving, profit-maximizing opportunism.

Prior to the formal operationalization of this measure, marketing literature frequently utilized generalized measures of brand attitude ($A_{brand}$) or generic company favorability ($A_C$). While broad evaluative scales capture affective valence (e.g., favorable/unfavorable, good/bad), they fail to isolate the ethical, moral, and altruistic dimensions specific to corporate social responsibility. The ATCSR scale was constructed to fill this psychometric void by providing a parsimonious, highly targeted measurement tool calibrated to detect variations in perceived corporate sincerity, public-interest orientation, and ethical citizenship.

In academic and applied research environments, the ATCSR scale serves several critical functions:

• Evaluating Campaign Authenticity: It allows researchers to assess whether varying campaign parameters—such as donation amounts, transactional purchase thresholds, or non-profit partner alignments—trigger positive moral evaluations or provoke consumer backlash and skepticism.
• Testing Consumer Attribution Pathways: The scale acts as a crucial mediator or dependent variable in behavioral experiments investigating how consumers decode persuasive marketing tactics and corporate altruism.
• Retail and Brand Strategy Optimization: In retail settings, managers apply the scale to gauge whether co-branded cause-retailer initiatives bolster the retailer’s reputation as a reliable community stakeholder or expose the brand to allegations of cause exploitation.
• Benchmarking Ethical Brand Equity: Organizations employ the instrument longitudinally to benchmark shifts in public perceptions of their corporate citizenship following public crises, ethical lapses, or proactive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the ATCSR scale is the consumer’s psychological appraisal of a commercial entity’s social responsibility, moral intentionality, and commitment to stakeholder welfare. Grounded in consumer psychology, this construct is multidimensional in conceptual breadth yet functions as a coherent, unidimensional evaluative judgment at the operational level.

1. Perceived Genuine Concern for Societal Welfare

At the core of the construct is the attribution of corporate empathy and benevolent intent. Consumers distinguish between strategic philanthropy (initiatives designed purely to yield financial returns) and intrinsic corporate benevolence. Item 1 (“[Company] is genuinely concerned about the welfare of others”) and Item 4 (“Helping others is important to [Company]”) evaluate the extent to which the company is perceived as harboring an authentic humanistic mission that transcends legal mandates and quarterly earnings targets.

2. Institutionalized Social Responsibility and Citizenship

The construct encompasses the broader institutional perception of the firm within society. Item 2 (“[Company] is a socially responsible company”) and Item 3 (“[Company] is a good corporate citizen”) capture the degree to which the firm conforms to societal norms of ethical conduct, environmental stewardship, and community engagement. Here, the company is evaluated as a holistic corporate citizen that respects the social contract governing business operations.

3. Attribution of Beneficiary Primacy (Altruistic vs. Egoistic Balance)

A distinctive dimension integrated into the ATCSR operationalization is the structural distribution of perceived benefits resulting from prosocial promotions. Item 5 (“This promotional offer primarily benefits the cause rather than [Company]”) directly assesses the discounting mechanism inherent in consumer persuasion knowledge. When consumers perceive that a cause-marketing promotion generates disproportionate windfalls for the company relative to the beneficiary non-profit, perceived social responsibility declines. True perceived social responsibility requires that the primary beneficiary of the moral action is inferred to be the cause or community rather than the corporate sponsor.

Theoretical Framework

The ATCSR scale is grounded in two primary theoretical foundations from social psychology and cognitive consumer behavior: Attribution Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), complemented by Carroll’s model of corporate citizenship.

Attribution Theory and Causal Inferences

Attribution theory, pioneered by Fritz Heider (1958) and expanded by Harold Kelley (1967, 1973), posits that individuals act as naive psychologists, constantly attempting to determine why actors behave in particular ways. Within consumer contexts, when an individual observes a corporation engaging in philanthropic or cause-related activity, they assign underlying motivations to the action along an egoistic-altruistic spectrum:

• Intrinsic / Public-Serving Attributions: The firm is seen as acting out of genuine moral obligation, care, and societal concern.
• Extrinsic / Firm-Serving Attributions: The firm is perceived as exploiting a societal problem for commercial gain, public relations rehabilitation, or tax incentives.

Under Kelley’s discounting principle, the presence of an obvious commercial motive (e.g., requiring consumers to purchase products to trigger a micro-donation) leads consumers to discount altruistic motives. The ATCSR scale captures the net outcome of this cognitive calculus: when consumers conclude that the prosocial act is not completely overshadowed by commercial self-interest, ratings on the ATCSR remain high.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM)

Developed by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright (1994), the Persuasion Knowledge Model asserts that consumers develop, refine, and utilize intuitive theories about marketers’ motives, strategies, and psychological tactics. When exposed to a cause-related marketing campaign, consumers’ persuasion knowledge is activated (“change of meaning” principle). Consumers evaluate the fairness, honesty, and appropriateness of the firm’s tactics. If the campaign design is perceived as disproportionately self-serving, persuasion knowledge triggers psychological resistance, skepticism, and cynicism. The ATCSR scale specifically operationalizes the post-persuasion appraisal: higher scores represent the consumer’s perception that the firm’s engagement with the cause is legitimate, sincere, and deserving of positive moral evaluation.

Carroll’s Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility

From an organizational perspective, the construct draws upon Archie Carroll’s (1979, 1991) four-part conceptualization of corporate social responsibility: economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities. The ATCSR scale operates primarily within the upper tiers of Carroll’s hierarchy—ethical responsibilities (doing what is right, just, and fair beyond legal obligations) and philanthropic responsibilities (contributing financial and operational resources to community welfare and charitable initiatives).

Validity

The measurement validation conducted by Folse, Niedrich, and Grau (2010), along with subsequent replications in consumer research, provides extensive empirical evidence supporting the scale’s construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the primary validation studies supporting the scale, the five items consistently demonstrated strong, statistically significant factor loadings on a single underlying latent variable. In structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), standardized factor loadings for all items routinely exceed $.70$ ($p < .001$), evidencing robust convergent validity. The average variance extracted (AVE) routinely surpasses the recommended$.50$ threshold, demonstrating that the latent construct accounts for the majority of the variance observed among the operationalized items.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by demonstrating that the ATCSR scale measures a construct distinct from related, yet conceptually separate, consumer perceptions, such as:

• General Attitude Toward the Ad ($A_{ad}$): Distinct from transient reactions to advertising aesthetics, tone, or spokesperson appeal.
• General Attitude Toward the Brand ($A_b$): Demonstrates empirical separation from overall brand preference, product functional performance, and perceived product quality.
• Attitude Toward the Non-Profit Cause ($A_{cause}$): Differentiates consumer warmth toward the underlying charity from their ethical evaluation of the corporate sponsor.

Average variance extracted values for the ATCSR latent factor consistently exceeded the squared correlations ($r^2$) between ATCSR and these competing constructs, satisfying the Fornell-Larcker (1981) criterion.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

The ATCSR scale exhibits strong predictive utility within structural nomological networks. In experimental manipulations of cause-retailing configurations (Folse et al., 2010), the scale successfully captured the interaction between consumer purchase quantity requirements (e.g., single-unit vs. multi-unit purchase requirements) and firm donation amounts (e.g., generous vs. minimal donations). Specifically:

• High donation amounts combined with minimal purchase barriers produced significantly higher ATCSR scores ($M > 5.20$).
• High purchase barriers paired with tokenistic corporate contributions activated persuasion skepticism, yielding significantly depressed ATCSR scores ($M < 3.80$).
• In turn, ATCSR positively and directly predicted downstream consumer behavioral intentions, including participation intentions in the cause promotion, word-of-mouth advocacy, and sustained brand loyalty ($p < .001$).

Reliability

The ATCSR scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency and psychometric reliability across diverse consumer samples, product categories, and promotional contexts.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In the original developmental experiments conducted by Folse, Niedrich, and Grau (2010), the five-item instrument demonstrated outstanding internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($\alpha$): Reported values consistently exceed $.88$, typically ranging between $.89$ and $.93$ across experimental conditions and independent retail samples.
• Composite Reliability (CR): In structural equation modeling frameworks, composite reliability values routinely surpass $.90$, far exceeding the conventional $.70$ benchmark for psychometric adequacy.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations for each of the five items routinely exceed $.65$, indicating that each individual indicator contributes robustly to the core construct without redundant distortion.

Replication and Temporal Stability

Subsequent investigations applying the ATCSR items across varying retail contexts (e.g., consumer packaged goods, specialty apparel, service environments) have confirmed the scale’s stability. Test-retest reliability across multi-wave longitudinal experimental designs has demonstrated acceptable temporal stability ($r_{tt} > .78$), confirming that while the measure is sensitive to experimental interventions and informational updates, it captures a coherent evaluative schema rather than momentary affective noise.

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the ATCSR scale has been evaluated using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and maximum likelihood exploratory factor analyses consistently reveal a clear, unidimensional factor solution:

• A single dominant factor emerges with an eigenvalue well in excess of the Kaiser-Guttman criterion (eigenvalue $> 3.50$).
• The primary factor accounts for over $70%$ of the total variance across the five items.
• Scree plot examinations exhibit a pronounced elbow following the first factor, confirming the absence of secondary or parasitic dimensions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic evaluations demonstrate superior fit for the single-factor model across published studies. Typical fit indices conforming to Hu and Bentler (1999) standards include:

• Model Fit: $chi^2 / df < 2.50$, indicating excellent parsimonious fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values routinely exceed $.97$ to $.99$.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Consistently reported above $.96$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates typically range from $.035$ to $.058$ ($90% \text{ CI } [0.000, 0.082]$), accompanied by non-significant $p$-close values.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently fall below $.030$.

Representative standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) across the five items in baseline structural evaluations are detailed below:

• Item 1 (Genuine concern for welfare): $\lambda \approx .86$
• Item 2 (Socially responsible company): $\lambda \approx .91$
• Item 3 (Good corporate citizen): $\lambda \approx .89$
• Item 4 (Helping others is important): $\lambda \approx .85$
• Item 5 (Promotion benefits cause over company): $\lambda \approx .74$

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The ATCSR scale is a self-administered, multi-item psychometric rating scale designed for quantitative survey and experimental laboratory settings. The instrument profile is detailed below:

• Construct Measured: Consumer attitudes toward a company’s social responsibility, moral commitment, and altruistic orientation.
• Target Population: Adult consumers, retail shoppers, and organizational stakeholders.
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) / online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, MTurk, Prolific).
• Completion Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Total Number of Items: 5 items.
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree).
• Scoring and Aggregation:
  • All items are worded in a direct, prosocial direction.
  • No reverse scoring is required under standard administration.
  • An overall composite index of attitude toward the company regarding social responsibility is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of all 5 completed items.
  • Higher scores (approaching 7.0) indicate strong attributions of corporate altruism, legitimate citizenship, and social commitment. Lower scores (approaching 1.0) reflect pronounced consumer skepticism, perceptions of exploitative opportunism, and lack of perceived social responsibility.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward the Company (Social Responsibility) (ATCSR) scale was formally developed and published in 2010 by Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Ronald W. Niedrich, and Stacy Landreth Grau in the Journal of Retailing.

• Permissions & Academic Use: The scale items and scoring protocol are published in the public academic literature. In accordance with standard fair use conventions in behavioral science, researchers, university faculty, and graduate students may utilize the scale for non-commercial educational and empirical research without requiring formal licensing fees.
• Commercial Applications: Commercial entities, corporate research divisions, and for-profit market research agencies seeking to deploy the scale within proprietary commercial assessment platforms should consult the copyright policies of the publisher (Elsevier / New York University) and acknowledge the original authors via appropriate scholarly citation.
• Contact and Attribution: When using or adapting the scale, professional standards mandate formal citation of the original source article: Folse, Niedrich, & Grau (2010), Journal of Retailing.

References

• Carroll, A. B. (1979). A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate performance. Academy of Management Review, 4(4), 497–505. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1979.4498296
• Carroll, A. B. (1991). The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons, 34(4), 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(91)90005-G
• Folse, J. A. G., Niedrich, R. W., & Grau, S. L. (2010). Cause-retailing marketing: The effects of purchase quantity and firm donation amount on consumer inferences and participation intentions. Journal of Retailing, 86(4), 295–309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2010.02.005
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
• Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–238). University of Nebraska Press.
• Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28(2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034225

Items of the Scale