Attitude Toward the Organization (Social Responsibility) (ATTO)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Organization (Social Responsibility) scale (frequently abbreviated as ATTO) is an influential psychometric instrument developed by Dwane Hal Dean in 1999 to assess consumer perceptions of an enterprise’s dedication to societal well-being and ethical stewardship. Originally operationalized within experimental research investigating how extrinsic cues—such as brand endorsement, perceived market popularity, and philanthropic event sponsorship—influence pre-purchase brand evaluations, the instrument isolates the social responsibility facet of corporate reputation from operational performance and product quality perceptions. The scale comprises five items rated on a multi-point Likert response format (commonly a 7-point continuum ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree). Psychometrically, the instrument exhibits a parsimonious, unidimensional factor structure characterized by exceptionally high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha values consistently between .88 and .93 across published empirical marketing studies). Extensive construct, convergent, and discriminant validity analyses have affirmed that the ATTO distinctly captures consumer judgments of corporate citizenship, operating as an indispensable cognitive mediator between marketing communications, perceived corporate morality, brand equity, and purchase intention. This article presents a thorough psychometric examination of the ATTO, delineating its theoretical foundations, structural validity, operational parameters, and research applications across consumer psychology, corporate communications, and business ethics.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward the Organization, Corporate Social Responsibility, ATTO, Dwane Hal Dean, Consumer Psychology, Corporate Citizenship, Brand Attitude, Signaling Theory, Measurement Scales, Advertising Cues

3. Authors

The scale was developed and validated by:

• Dwane Hal Dean, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, School of Business, High Point University (formerly affiliated with Louisiana State University and Frostburg State University). Dr. Dean specializes in consumer evaluations of brand alliances, corporate social performance, event sponsorship, advertising strategy, and business ethics.

4. Purpose

The fundamental purpose of the Attitude Toward the Organization (Social Responsibility) scale is to provide a standardized, psychometrically robust measurement of how consumers subjectively evaluate an organization’s ethical posture, civic contributions, and general social benevolence. While conventional marketing tools historically focused on functional attributes—such as perceived product quality, price fairness, or customer satisfaction—the evolution of modern consumer psychology highlighted an increasing demand for assessing corporate morality and civic integrity.

In research contexts, the ATTO fulfills multiple diagnostic and experimental objectives:

• Experimental Cue Isolation: It allows researchers to quantify the specific impact of corporate sponsorship, cause-related marketing campaigns, executive public statements, and brand endorsements on consumer social sentiment, isolating social attitudes from pure product-attribute beliefs.
• Mediation and Moderation Modeling: The instrument acts as a crucial intervening construct in structural equation models exploring how organizational behaviors translate into brand loyalty, customer brand identification, consumer forgiveness during crises, and purchase likelihood.
• Corporate Reputation and Crisis Tracking: In business communications and public relations research, the ATTO is employed to measure reputational erosion following corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) incidents or to gauge the restorative efficacy of corrective corporate communications.
• Differentiation from Corporate Ability: Rooted in the corporate associations literature, the scale enables researchers to cleanly separate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) associations from Corporate Ability (CA) associations (e.g., manufacturing prowess, innovation, and financial strength).

Beyond academic research, the ATTO provides applied organizational value. Brand strategists and corporate affairs officers utilize the instrument to benchmark stakeholder perceptions, audit corporate communications, and assess consumer skepticism or perceived greenwashing before and after major social investment announcements.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the ATTO is consumer-perceived corporate social responsibility—defined as an individual’s affective and cognitive appraisal of an organization’s voluntary commitment to societal welfare, ethical conduct, and sustainable communal enrichment. Rather than evaluating concrete technical metrics (e.g., carbon tonnage offsets or financial audit ratios), the ATTO measures subjective psychological sentiment regarding an entity’s moral character as an institutional citizen.

This construct is articulated around several interrelated conceptual dimensions, unified under a single overarching evaluative latent factor:

• Societal Benevolence: The perception that an enterprise genuinely prioritizes the betterment of society rather than operating solely from an egocentric, profit-maximizing perspective. Consumers evaluate whether the firm is viewed as an active partner in social progress.
• Civic Consciousness and Good Citizenship: Grounded in Carroll’s pyramid of corporate performance, this facet reflects the belief that the organization fulfills its moral, ethical, and philanthropic obligations toward community stakeholders.
• Authentic Community Engagement: The judgment that the organization’s philanthropic donations, community programs, and sponsorships reflect substantive prosocial values rather than superficial, opportunistic impression-management tactics.
• Social Welfare Stewardship: The cognitive attribution that the organization minimizes negative externalities and actively safeguards broader public and ecological interests within its sphere of influence.

In consumer cognition, this construct forms an evaluative schema that acts as a cognitive lens. When individuals form favorable attitudes toward an organization’s social responsibility, a psychological halo effect often emerges, positively coloring product perceptions, buffering the brand against ambiguous negative publicity, and fostering elevated consumer-company identification.

6. Theoretical Framework

The ATTO is grounded in several foundational paradigms within social psychology, microeconomics, and marketing theory:

Signaling Theory

Originating from Michael Spence’s Signaling Theory (1973), this paradigm posits that in markets characterized by information asymmetry, buyers face uncertainty regarding unobservable organizational attributes. External cues—such as philanthropic sponsorships, ethical endorsements, and social campaigns—function as credible market signals. The ATTO measures the receiver’s decoded response to these signals: when signals are deemed costly, consistent, and authentic, the receiver constructs a favorable attitude toward the firm’s underlying prosocial posture.

Attribution Theory

According to Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967), observers constantly infer the underlying motives driving organizational conduct. When a company engages in community support, consumers classify the motive along an intrinsic-extrinsic spectrum. An intrinsic attribution (the company acts out of genuine altruistic concern) drives high ATTO scores. Conversely, an extrinsic attribution (the company acts solely to manipulate sales or deflect regulatory scrutiny) suppresses ATTO scores and engenders consumer cynicism.

Corporate Associations Model

Brown and Dacin’s (1997) framework on corporate associations demonstrates that consumer cognition stores two primary classes of organizational knowledge: Corporate Ability (CA) associations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) associations. Dean’s (1999) operationalization of the ATTO was constructed deliberately to reflect the CSR association stream, validating that attitudes toward corporate morality operate through psychological pathways distinct from technical competence, directly influencing overall attitude toward the brand ($A_b$) and subsequent behavioral intentions ($PI$).

Theory of Planned Behavior

Within Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (1991), specific and general attitudes serve as direct precursors to behavioral intentions. The ATTO provides the targeted evaluative attitude component regarding institutional ethics, functioning as an essential antecedent in structural models predicting ethical consumerism, brand advocacy, and boycott resilience.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the ATTO has been rigorously corroborated across diverse methodological contexts, including experimental designs, field surveys, and structural equation modeling.

Construct and Content Validity

Content validity was established during scale generation through deductive item pooling based on established organizational social performance literature (e.g., Carroll, 1979) and expert panel review in marketing communication. The resulting five items thoroughly encompass the conceptual domain of perceived corporate social performance, institutional benevolence, and societal obligation without introducing construct-irrelevant operational or financial performance noise.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity is evidenced by substantial, statistically significant correlations between the ATTO and closely aligned psychological constructs. In Dean’s (1999) foundational studies and subsequent replications, the scale demonstrated robust positive associations with:

• General Attitude Toward the Brand ($r = .52$ to $.68, p < .001$)
• Consumer Trust in Management ($r = .58$ to $.71, p < .001$)
• Consumer-Company Identification ($r = .49$ to $.64, p < .001$)
• Perceived Corporate Integrity ($r = .65$ to $.78, p < .001$)

Confirmatory factor analytic tests uniformly demonstrate that the average variance extracted (AVE) for the latent construct exceeds the accepted threshold of .50, typically falling between .62 and .74, indicating that the scale explains far more common variance than measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio tests. The square root of the AVE for the ATTO consistently exceeds its inter-construct correlations with disparate dimensions such as Corporate Financial Strength, Perceived Product Quality, Brand Familiarity, and Price Fairness (HTMT values consistently $< .85$). This confirms that respondents clearly separate moral and social evaluations of an enterprise from its functional or commercial capability.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity is affirmed by the ATTO’s performance in hypothesis testing. Dean (1999) demonstrated that pre-purchase exposure to third-party event sponsorships significantly elevated ATTO scores, which in turn mediated pre-purchase brand evaluations. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies confirm that elevated ATTO scores reliably predict real-world consumer behaviors, including willingness to pay a premium for ethical goods, resilience to negative brand rumors, and elevated word-of-mouth advocacy.

8. Reliability

The Attitude Toward the Organization (Social Responsibility) scale displays robust reliability metrics across diverse demographic strata, cultural samples, and experimental manipulations.

Internal Consistency

In the seminal publication by Dean (1999), the five-item instrument yielded an internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha, $\alpha$) of .91 across experimental conditions. Subsequent studies utilizing the instrument across varying product categories (e.g., consumer packaged goods, financial institutions, telecommunications, and sports apparel) consistently report Cronbach’s alpha values exceeding accepted psychometric cutoffs:

• Dean (1999) foundational validation: $\alpha = .91$
• Cross-cultural replications and brand alliance investigations: $\alpha = .88 \text{ to } .93$
• Composite Reliability ($CR$): Regularly evaluated in structural models with values ranging from $.89$ to $.94$, far exceeding the conservative benchmark of $.70$.

Item-Total and Inter-Item Correlations

Corrected item-total correlations across the five items typically range between $.68$ and $.84$. Inter-item correlations regularly fall between $.55$ and $.76$, demonstrating an optimal balance: items share sufficient variance to ensure high unidimensional coherence without being completely collinear or redundant.

Stability and Test-Retest Reliability

In stable experimental control conditions with longitudinal testing intervals ranging from two to four weeks, the test-retest correlation coefficient ($r_{tt}$) has been observed between $.78$ and $.85$, indicating temporal stability when external organizational information remains invariant.

9. Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of the ATTO scale has been thoroughly substantiated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and maximum likelihood factor extractions consistently indicate an unequivocal single-factor solution based on Kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalue $> 1.0$) and Cattell’s scree plot analysis. The dominant single factor accounts for approximately 68% to 76% of the total variance across items. All five items load strongly onto this unitary dimension, with factor loadings uniformly exceeding $.75$ and negligible cross-loadings when examined alongside product-attribute evaluation scales.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Structural validation via maximum likelihood CFA corroborates the unidimensional latent structure. Representative model fit indices across empirical applications reflect an exceptional fit to observed data:

• Chi-Square Ratio: $\chi^2 / df le 2.45$ ($p > .05$ in appropriately powered samples)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $ge .97$ (often exceeding $.99$)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $ge .96$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $le .048$ (90% Confidence Interval: $[.000, .072]$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $le .028$

Standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) derived from CFA models typically range as follows:

• Perceived corporate citizenship: $\lambda = .84 \text{ to } .89$
• Contribution to societal welfare: $\lambda = .81 \text{ to } .87$
• Societal concern and responsibility: $\lambda = .83 \text{ to } .91$
• Social responsiveness: $\lambda = .76 \text{ to } .83$
• Commitment to community improvement: $\lambda = .79 \text{ to } .85$

These robust loadings verify that each item serves as an effective indicator of the latent social responsibility attitude.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the instrument are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Attitude Toward the Organization (Social Responsibility) Scale (ATTO)
• Originating Author: Dwane Hal Dean (1999)
• Instrument Type: Self-administered psychometric rating scale / questionnaire
• Target Population: Consumers, organizational stakeholders, survey panels, and experimental participants
• Number of Items: 5 items
• Dimensionality: Unidimensional (1 factor)
• Response Format: Multi-point Likert scale (standardly 7-point, though 5-point versions are occasionally adopted):
  1 = Strongly Disagree
  2 = Disagree
  3 = Somewhat Disagree
  4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  5 = Somewhat Agree
  6 = Agree
  7 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes
• Scoring Protocol: An overall composite score is computed either as a summated index (range: 5 to 35 for a 7-point scale) or as an arithmetic mean across the five items (range: 1.00 to 7.00). Higher values reflect a more favorable perception of the organization’s corporate social responsibility. There are no reverse-coded items in the standard version.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was developed and published in 1999 in the Journal of Advertising by Dwane Hal Dean. The Journal of Advertising is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the American Academy of Advertising.

Licensing and Usage Permissions:

• Academic and Non-Commercial Research: Under standard fair-use academic conventions, researchers and university faculty may utilize the item wording for non-commercial academic investigations, dissertations, and scientific publications provided full formal bibliographic attribution is rendered to Dean (1999).
• Commercial and Proprietary Application: For commercial consulting, proprietary brand equity auditing, or for-profit market research platforms, practitioners must consult the copyright holder (American Academy of Advertising / Taylor & Francis) to obtain requisite permissions or licensing arrangements.
• Access Fee: The psychometric structure is publicly documented in academic literature; no royalty fees are assessed for non-commercial academic research use.

12. References

Below are primary peer-reviewed references foundational to the scale and its theoretical framework:

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
• Brown, T. J., & Dacin, P. A. (1997). The company and the product: Corporate associations and consumer product responses. Journal of Marketing, 61(1), 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299706100106
• 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
• Dean, D. H. (1999). Brand endorsement, popularity, and event sponsorship as advertising cues affecting consumer pre-purchase attitudes. Journal of Advertising, 28(3), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1999.10673587
• Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• 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.
• Sen, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2001). Does doing good always lead to doing better? Consumer reactions to corporate social responsibility. Journal of Marketing Research, 38(2), 225–243. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.38.2.225.18838
• Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010

13. Items of the Scale