Desire to Connect With Home (DCH)

Abstract

The Desire to Connect With Home (DCH) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s psychological yearning and motivational orientation toward re-establishing emotional, social, and physical linkages with their self-defined place of origin or cultural heritage. Developed by Carlos J. Torelli, Rohini Ahluwalia, Shirley Y. Y. Cheng, Nicholas J. Olson, and Jennifer L. Stoner (2017), the instrument captures how individuals navigate cultural identity, spatial relocation, and subjective belonging across globalized and culturally diverse environments. Unlike traditional measures of homesickness or spatial separation, the DCH treats "home" as a subjective, phenomenologically constructed domain that encompasses familial social networks, material cultural artifacts, regional sensory markers, and communal rituals. The scale typically operates as a multi-item self-report questionnaire using a 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 ("Strongly Disagree") to 7 ("Strongly Agree"). Across empirical investigations in consumer psychology, social psychology, and cultural research, the DCH demonstrates robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically exceeding α = .85, alongside well-documented convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. Factor-analytic evaluations validate either a cohesive unidimensional global construct or a three-component architecture encompassing social-relational connection, material-tangible re-anchoring, and symbolic-experiential engagement. The scale effectively predicts consumer behavior, in-group boundary malleability, brand preference shifts, and adaptive acculturative responses among sojourners, expatriates, and domestic migrants.

Keywords

Desire to Connect With Home, Cultural Identity, In-Group Boundaries, Consumer Behavior, Brand Preference, Cultural Distinctiveness, Acculturation, Psychometrics, Self-Construal, Belongingness

Authors

The Desire to Connect With Home construct and its operationalization were established by a collaborative team of scholars in marketing and consumer psychology:

• Carlos J. Torelli – Professor of Business Administration and James F. Towey Faculty Fellow at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Torelli’s research focuses on global consumer culture, cross-cultural psychology, brand management, and cultural values.
• Rohini Ahluwalia – Professor of Marketing and Curtis L. Carlson Chair in Marketing at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. Her scholarship examines consumer information processing, brand attitudes, and identity-driven consumption.
• Shirley Y. Y. Cheng – Associate Professor of Marketing, specialized in multicultural identity integration, social cognition, and cross-cultural consumer responses.
• Nicholas J. Olson – Academic researcher and consumer psychologist examining cross-cultural identity dynamics, socio-cognitive processes, and consumer brand evaluations.
• Jennifer L. Stoner – Assistant Professor of Marketing, focusing on brand symbolism, consumer identity signaling, and the psychological effects of cultural representations in the marketplace.

Purpose

The primary objective of the Desire to Connect With Home (DCH) scale is to quantitatively measure the intensity of an individual’s motivation to restore psychological, social, and material contact with their self-defined "home." In modern societies marked by heightened geographical mobility, immigration, academic sojourning, and corporate expatriation, individuals routinely experience dislocation from their geographic and cultural origins. While early psychological inquiry classified spatial separation primarily under clinical frameworks such as acute homesickness, adjustment disorders, or somatic distress, contemporary behavioral science conceptualizes connection to home as a normative, dynamic regulatory drive.

Torelli and colleagues (2017) formulated the DCH scale to bridge an empirical gap in the literature regarding how social contexts of distinctiveness activate cultural identity motives. Specifically, when an individual perceives themselves as culturally distinctive or exposed to environments where their heritage is underrepresented or contrasted, their internal motivation to seek refuge, affirmation, and communion with "home" surges. The DCH was engineered to measure this motivational surge across distinct expressive domains: connecting through interpersonal contact with familiar persons, consuming domestic cultural objects and products, and participating in shared practices, rituals, and experiential memories.

In research contexts, the scale functions as an indispensable independent, mediating, or moderating variable within cross-cultural psychology, consumer neuroscience, international marketing, and sociological studies of migration. For instance, in consumer behavior research, the DCH explains why individuals often exhibit an elevated preference for home-country domestic brands over foreign or global alternatives when identity threats or cultural distinctiveness cues occur. Rather than reflecting rigid economic ethnocentrism, elevated DCH scores reveal a compensatory consumer response aimed at psychophysiological grounding and self-affirmation.

In applied and clinical settings, the DCH offers significant utility for counseling psychologists and student affairs professionals working with international students, refugees, military personnel, and displaced workers. By parsing whether high scores stem from social isolation, lack of cultural self-expression, or sensory deprivation, practitioners can implement targeted psychoeducational and community-building interventions that facilitate healthy adaptation without necessitating the erasure of native cultural ties.

Psychological Construct

The construct captured by the DCH scale is an active, multidimensional motivational orientation characterized by the subjective impulse to reinforce linkages with one’s cultural or geographic roots. A defining aspect of this construct is its phenomenological flexibility: the conceptualization of "home" is not imposed by objective administrative boundaries (e.g., postal codes, state borders, or national passports), but is entirely self-defined by the respondent. For one individual, home may represent a specific ancestral village; for another, a multi-ethnic urban metropolis, a nation-state, or a broader transnational cultural sphere. Across empirical investigations, the construct manifests through three interrelated dimensions:

1. Interpersonal and Relational Connection

The relational dimension reflects the desire to initiate, sustain, or intensify interaction with the human network associated with one’s origin. This encompasses nuclear and extended family, childhood peers, mentors, and community elders. This dimension reflects fundamental tenets of the need to belong. Illustrative manifestations include an amplified drive to make phone or video calls, engage with hometown-based social media clusters, or mentally replay shared interpersonal histories. When individuals experience high DCH within this facet, social interaction serves as an emotional buffer against alienating external environments.

2. Material, Sensory, and Commercial Connection

The material dimension captures an individual’s motivation to encounter, acquire, and consume physical artifacts, domestic consumer goods, and sensory elements linked to their home context. Material objects possess profound semiotic weight; they are not merely functional tools, but physical vessels of cultural identity. This dimension involves seeking out traditional regional foods, native culinary spices, domestically manufactured apparel, household decorations, regional handicrafts, or heritage brands. Consumption of these items functions as a compensatory mechanism through which individuals incorporate the tangible substance of home into their immediate physical environment.

3. Symbolic, Experiential, and Cultural Re-Immersion

The experiential dimension encompasses the pursuit of cultural rituals, linguistic engagement, media consumption, and communal practices associated with the home culture. This manifests in an intensified urge to listen to music in one’s native tongue or regional dialect, follow hometown news or regional sports teams, celebrate ancestral holidays, and engage in ritual practices. Through symbolic engagement, individuals preserve the continuity of their narrative identity, bridging their past socio-cultural background with their present geographic reality.

These three dimensions converge to form a unified psychological state: a goal-directed motivational system that prioritizes in-group communion, familiarity, and self-anchoring when cultural equilibrium is challenged.

Theoretical Framework

The Desire to Connect With Home scale is grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation drawing from social identity, evolutionary belonging, optimal distinctiveness, and consumer culture theory.

Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization

Rooted in the seminal work of Henri Tajfel and John Turner (Social Identity Theory), the DCH framework posits that an individual’s self-concept is heavily derived from their perceived membership in relevant social and cultural groups. When social context renders one’s cultural group identity salient—such as being a member of a numerical minority in a foreign city—self-categorization processes are triggered. The distinctiveness of one’s social identity motivates behavior directed at validating and reinforcing in-group boundaries. In the Torelli et al. (2017) model, the desire to connect with home acts as a psychological mechanism that clarifies and reinforces in-group boundaries, leading individuals to favor entities (products, brands, people) that signify the primary in-group.

Optimal Distinctiveness Theory

Marilynn Brewer’s Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (ODT) proposes that individuals operate between two opposing social drives: the need for assimilation (belongingness) and the need for differentiation (distinctiveness). When individuals reside in contexts characterized by extreme distinctiveness (e.g., an unfamiliar foreign environment), their need for differentiation is oversaturated, triggering a deficit in belongingness and inclusion. The DCH represents a restorative drive: it activates the motivation to mentally and physically connect with the home group to re-establish psychological balance and satisfy the frustrated belongingness motive.

Acculturation Models and Cultural Stress

In John Berry’s foundational acculturation theory, individuals navigating cross-cultural contact negotiate two core issues: cultural maintenance (the extent to which one values preserving one’s original identity) and contact-participation (the extent to which one engages with the host culture). The DCH scale quantifies the acute motivational intensity underpinning cultural maintenance. Unlike static demographic indicators, DCH captures real-time fluctuations in the psychological impulse to maintain heritage connections in response to immediate situational stressors, cross-cultural cognitive load, or environmental alienation.

Compensatory Consumption and Semiotic Anchoring

Within consumer culture theory (CCT), material objects are recognized as dynamic resources for identity construction and psychological homeostasis. Russell Belk’s formulation of the "extended self" suggests that possessions, foods, and brands serve as literal extensions of an individual’s self-concept. When geographic relocation fractures the physical ecology of the self, compensatory consumption behaviors are mobilized. The DCH acts as the underlying psychological engine driving individuals toward products possessing high cultural and domestic symbolism, transforming basic commercial acts into meaningful identity-affirming behaviors.

Validity

Empirical evaluations of the Desire to Connect With Home scale demonstrate robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse samples, including international university cohorts, migrant labor populations, and consumers across North America, Europe, and East Asia.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity for the DCH has been established through structural equation modeling (SEM) and correlation matrices with theoretically adjacent constructs. The scale correlates positively and significantly with:

• Nostalgia Scales: Demonstrates strong positive correlations ($r = .52$ to $.68, p < .001$) with validated inventories measuring personal and cultural nostalgia (e.g., the Southampton Nostalgia Scale), reflecting shared affective roots without conceptual redundancy.
• Heritage Identity Centrality: Positively predicts scores on ethnic and heritage identity affirmation measures ($r = .44$ to $.59, p < .001$), confirming that individuals who place central cognitive importance on their cultural roots experience stronger drives to reconnect.
• Homesickness Indices: Yields moderate correlations ($r = .40$ to $.55$) with conventional homesickness inventories. The moderate magnitude reflects an important conceptual distinction: whereas homesickness is characterized by passive depressive symptoms, social withdrawal, and somatic distress, DCH measures an active, approach-oriented motivational pursuit.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that the DCH does not conflate with generalized negative affectivity, neuroticism, or baseline interpersonal loneliness:

• Loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale): DCH shares low to modest correlation ($r = .18$ to $.26$) with general loneliness, confirming that DCH is not merely an index of interpersonal deprivation, but a culturally and spatially directed identity motivation.
• Ethnocentrism (CETSCALE): Discriminant analysis confirms that DCH differs sharply from consumer ethnocentrism ($r = .12$ to $.22$). While ethnocentrism is rooted in protectionist, out-group-derogating attitudes, DCH represents an in-group approach mechanism devoid of inherent out-group hostility.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): In CFA models, the AVE for DCH regularly exceeds the recommended .50 threshold (typical values between .58 and .71) and surpasses the squared correlations between DCH and adjacent constructs, satisfying the Fornell-Larcker criterion.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The predictive power of the DCH has been demonstrated across multiple experimental and field settings:

• In-Group Boundary Expansion: In Torelli et al.’s (2017) baseline investigations, heightened DCH systematically predicted how flexibly consumers categorized regional and national brands into their subjective in-group. High DCH motivated individuals to broaden their conceptual boundaries to adopt brands from their broader cultural sphere into their identity-support network.
• Product Selection and Brand Loyalty: In controlled purchasing simulations, elevated DCH significantly predicted real choices of domestic over foreign goods, even when domestic items carried a price premium of 15% to 25%, establishing robust behavioral criterion validity.
• Experimental Manipulations: Inductions of cultural distinctiveness (e.g., priming an individual with their minority status within a professional setting) led to statistically significant increases in DCH scores ($F(1, 142) = 8.74, p = .004, u03b7_p^2 = .058$), verifying the instrument’s sensitivity to situational shifts.

Reliability

The DCH scale exhibits high internal consistency and psychometric reliability across cross-sectional surveys, multi-wave longitudinal designs, and laboratory experiments.

Internal Consistency

Across published empirical studies, the internal consistency of the DCH scale routinely meets and exceeds conventional psychometric standards (α ≥ .80):

• In the initial validation series by Torelli et al. (2017), the scale achieved internal consistency estimates ranging between α = .86 and α = .92 across undergraduate student samples and broad consumer panels recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Subsequent cross-cultural applications evaluating Asian, Hispanic, and Anglo-American consumer groups reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently within the .84 to .91 corridor.
• Composite Reliability (CR) metrics derived from confirmatory factor analytic models routinely register between .87 and .93, demonstrating that the observed items consistently tap into the overarching latent construct.
• McDonald’s omega hierarchical (ω_h) and total (ω_t) coefficients, which provide more robust estimates of reliability under conditions of slight tau-equivalence violation, frequently exceed ω = .88.

Test-Retest Stability

Given that the DCH can operate both as an enduring baseline motivational orientation and as an acutely responsive psychological state, test-retest reliability varies predictably according to context:

• In stable environmental contexts without cultural primes or geographic dislocation over a two-to-four-week period, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) indicates moderate-to-high temporal stability ($r_{tt} = .74$ to $.81, p < .001$).
• Under conditions where individuals experience immediate geographic relocation or experimental identity primes, test-retest correlations decrease, reflecting the scale’s capacity to capture situational shifts in identity-affirmation drives.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the DCH scale has been evaluated through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across diverse sample sizes and cultural demographics.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During exploratory instrument development, maximum likelihood extraction with oblique rotations (Promax and Oblimin) was conducted to explore the underlying latent architecture:

• Initial unconstrained factor extraction consistently yields a dominant first factor with an eigenvalue well exceeding Kaiser’s criterion of 1.0 (typical first eigenvalues range from 3.8 to 4.6), accounting for over 58% to 68% of the total item variance.
• Scree plot inspections demonstrate a distinct inflection point after the first primary component, supporting the operationalization of the DCH as a parsimonious, unidimensional composite index in applied experimental settings.
• In broader cross-cultural inventories that capture distinct experiential modalities, three correlated sub-dimensions emerge: Relational Connection (social networks), Material Consumption (tangible objects/brands), and Experiential Re-Immersion (rituals/language/media). Inter-factor correlations among these components range between $r = .55$ and $.72$, supporting a higher-order overarching construct.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Confirmatory factor analyses testing both a single-factor global model and a second-order hierarchical model have confirmed adequate-to-excellent psychometric fit across independent samples. Structural equation modeling standards mandate evaluation across multiple goodness-of-fit metrics:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2/df$): Values consistently range between 1.45 and 2.32, well below the conservative ceiling of 3.0.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Empirical studies document CFI values spanning .958 to .989, indicating excellent alignment between the hypothesized structural model and the sample covariance matrix.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typical values fall between .947 and .982, well exceeding the .90 benchmark for acceptable fit.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Coefficients fall comfortably between .038 and .062 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded within .021 and .074).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently measure between .028 and .046.

Factor Loadings and Invariance

Standardized factor loadings across items onto the primary latent construct consistently exceed λ = .65, with the majority falling between λ = .74 and λ = .88. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) tests demonstrate configural, metric, and scalar invariance across domestic and international sub-populations, confirming that the scale measures the same psychological construct in an equivalent metric across culturally diverse populations.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Desire to Connect With Home instrument is structured as an efficient, self-administered questionnaire suitable for paper-and-pencil completion, online psychometric testing, or laboratory-based experimental execution.

• Construct Assessed: Individual motivation to reconnect with one’s self-defined place of origin through people, objects, and experiences.
• Target Population: Adults, university students, immigrant cohorts, expatriate personnel, and consumers across domestic and international settings.
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Format: Self-report questionnaire consisting of closed-ended rating items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert rating scale structured as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Item Content Focus: Statements operationalize connection to home across three core expressive domains:
  • Interpersonal reconnection (communicating with family, hometown friends, or familiar social groups).
  • Material re-anchoring (seeking home-country foods, regional consumer brands, and physical artifacts).
  • Experiential and symbolic immersion (consuming home-culture media, observing cultural practices, and recalling shared memories).
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Items are worded in a direct positive direction and do not require reverse-scoring.
  • A composite Global DCH Score is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across all items, yielding a continuous score from 1.00 to 7.00.
  • Higher numerical scores reflect an intensified motivational drive to connect with one’s home environment, whereas lower scores reflect indifference or low current psychological activation of home-identity needs.
  • When investigating specific modalities, subscale scores can be derived by averaging the respective items designated under the Relational, Material, and Experiential domains.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Desire to Connect With Home (DCH) scale was first published in 2017 in the Journal of Consumer Research (Volume 44, Issue 1, pages 44–61) under the authorship of Carlos J. Torelli, Rohini Ahluwalia, Shirley Y. Y. Cheng, Nicholas J. Olson, and Jennifer L. Stoner.

The copyright of the original research article and its operationalized instrumentation is held by the Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., with distribution through Oxford University Press. For academic, educational, and non-commercial scientific research purposes, researchers may utilize the conceptual framework and scale items under standard academic fair-use guidelines, provided full bibliographic citation and attribution are given to the original authors and journal.

Commercial applications, including proprietary market research, commercial consumer testing, corporate HR evaluations, and integration into commercial psychometric testing software platforms, require explicit copyright clearance and licensing permissions from Oxford University Press and the copyright holders. No mandatory user fee is assessed for independent academic and non-commercial scientific studies.

References

• Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1086/209154
• Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology, 46(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x
• Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(5), 475–482. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167291175001
• Strizhakova, Y., & Coulter, R. A. (2015). Drivers of local relative to global and foreign brand purchases in emerging markets: The role of cultural identity and brand perceptions. International Marketing Review, 32(3/4), 458–482. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-01-2014-0012
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
• Torelli, C. J., Ahluwalia, R., Cheng, S. Y. Y., Olson, N. J., & Stoner, J. L. (2017). Redefining home: How cultural distinctiveness affects the malleability of in-group boundaries and brand preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(1), 44–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw074
• Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 975–993. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975

Items of the Scale