Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization (EBNO)

1. Abstract

The Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization (EBNO) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumer perceptions regarding whether, and to what extent, a nonprofit organization (NPO) endorses, approves, or sanctions a commercial entity or its products within cause-related marketing (CRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. Developed by Amanda B. Bower and Stacy Landreth Grau and introduced in their seminal 2009 study published in the Journal of Advertising, the scale addresses critical gaps at the intersection of consumer psychology, advertising ethics, and strategic brand alliances. Grounded in attribution theory, the persuasion knowledge model, and institutional signaling paradigms, the EBNO operationalizes the cognitive inferences consumers draw when commercial brands publicize philanthropic contributions or nonprofit partnerships.

The instrument consists of a 7-item unidimensional scale administered using a standard 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”). Extensive empirical evaluations demonstrate that the EBNO possesses robust psychometric properties, consistently exhibiting high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha values regularly exceeding α = .90, frequently between .91 and .94 across diverse experimental conditions) and high composite reliability (ρ_c > .90). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) affirm an unambiguous single-factor structure characterized by strong standardized factor loadings (ranging between .76 and .92) and favorable goodness-of-fit indices (CFI > .97, TLI > .95, RMSEA < .06). Nomological and construct validity have been substantiated through robust correlations with source credibility, brand evaluations, attitude toward the advertisement (A_ad), and consumer skepticism. The scale serves as an essential measurement apparatus for researchers investigating deceptive advertising, regulatory compliance under Federal Trade Commission guidelines, co-branding dynamics, and ethical consumerism.

2. Keywords

Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization, EBNO, Cause-Related Marketing, Corporate Social Responsibility, Nonprofit Partnerships, Inferred Endorsement, Consumer Skepticism, Persuasion Knowledge Model, Attribution Theory, Psychometrics, Advertising Ethics, Brand Alliances, Construct Validity, Factor Analysis.

3. Authors

The Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization (EBNO) scale was conceived, developed, and empirically validated by two prominent scholars in advertising, consumer behavior, and marketing ethics:

• Amanda B. Bower, Ph.D.: Professor of Business Administration and Marketing at the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, USA. Her scholarly inquiry centers on advertising effectiveness, consumer inferences, model attractiveness, and the cognitive heuristics consumers deploy when interpreting persuasive corporate communications.
• Stacy Landreth Grau, Ph.D.: Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Her research focuses heavily on cause-related marketing, social marketing, corporate philanthropy, healthcare communications, and consumer vulnerability.

Correspondence regarding the foundational validation studies is typically directed through academic channels associated with the Journal of Advertising and institutional repositories at Washington and Lee University or Saint Louis University.

4. Purpose

The primary objective of the Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization (EBNO) scale is to quantify the degree to which individual consumers perceive that a specified nonprofit organization officially supports, recommends, evaluates, or endorses a commercial brand as a result of observed corporate philanthropic claims. In contemporary marketplace environments, corporations frequently deploy cause-related marketing (CRM), wherein a commercial brand pledges to donate a portion of sales proceeds or a lump-sum financial contribution to a designated charitable cause. Historically, marketing practitioners assumed that publicizing explicit corporate donations yielded uniformly favorable consumer responses by fostering benevolent brand associations.

However, an essential theoretical and regulatory paradox emerges: consumers frequently conflate a purely transactional financial donation with an official, objective institutional endorsement. When a consumer reads that “Brand X donates 10% of proceeds to Nonprofit Y,” they often infer that Nonprofit Y has evaluated Brand X’s product, certified its efficacy or ethical standards, and granted an official organizational endorsement. Such inferences may be wholly ungrounded in corporate-nonprofit contracts, inadvertently creating deceptive or misleading commercial impressions.

The EBNO scale was engineered to serve several pivotal research and applied functions:

• Measurement of Unwarranted Inferences: It systematically captures cognitive “spillover” effects where financial philanthropy is erroneously interpreted as institutional quality certification.
• Regulatory and Ethical Compliance: The scale provides regulatory bodies, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and consumer advocacy organizations with an empirical metric to establish whether specific commercial disclosures mislead reasonable consumers regarding third-party endorsements.
• Brand Alliance and Co-Branding Evaluation: It enables nonprofit managers to evaluate the legal and reputational risks of partnering with commercial enterprises, ensuring that the nonprofit’s mission-critical institutional trust is not co-opted without formal endorsement agreements.
• Investigating Consumer Skepticism and Halo Effects: In academic experimental designs, the EBNO serves as a mediating or dependent variable to examine how attributional cues, corporate reputation, and cause-brand congruence influence consumer perceptions of organizational legitimacy.

5. Psychological Construct

The latent construct quantified by the scale is Perceived Endorsement by a Nonprofit Organization. Within consumer psychology, an endorsement represents an overt or implicit communicative act wherein an identifiable party declares support for, certifies, or promotes a brand, service, or social behavior. In traditional celebrity or expert endorsements, the endorser explicitly communicates their approval. In contrast, within nonprofit-commercial alliances, endorsement is frequently an inferred cognitive construct—a subjective mental leap executed by the perceiver based on fragmented contextual cues.

The EBNO construct encompasses several distinct cognitive and perceptual facets integrated into a unified latent dimension:

• Formal Recommendation Inferences: The belief that the nonprofit entity actively advises consumers to purchase, adopt, or utilize the corporate sponsor’s product over alternative commercial offerings.
• Quality Certification and Objective Verification: The cognitive assumption that the nonprofit organization has tested, vetted, or certified the quality, safety, or ethical integrity of the focal brand.
• Institutional Sanction and Moral Approval: The perception that the commercial brand has received an official stamp of moral approval from a mission-driven, prosocial institution.
• Contractual Exclusivity and Collaborative Alignment: The inference that the partnership reflects a deep, values-based institutional alignment rather than a superficial transactional advertising placement.

For example, when consumers encounter an advertisement for an organic laundry detergent announcing financial support for an environmental nonprofit, they may infer not merely that a monetary gift was transferred, but that the nonprofit conducted rigorous laboratory testing confirming the detergent’s eco-friendly properties. The EBNO scale gauges this psychological leap, discerning whether the consumer perceives passive monetary patronage or active organizational certification.

6. Theoretical Framework

The EBNO scale is theoretically anchored in three major paradigms within cognitive and social psychology: Attribution Theory, the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), and Grant McCracken’s Meaning Transfer Model.

Attribution Theory and Causal Inference

Attribution theory, pioneered by Fritz Heider (1958) and expanded by Harold Kelley (1973), posits that individuals act as “naive psychologists,” systematically seeking causal explanations for events and interpersonal communications. When consumers are exposed to a corporate advertisement highlighting a charitable contribution, they formulate causal attributions regarding the corporation’s underlying motives (e.g., intrinsic/altruistic vs. extrinsic/profit-driven) and the nonprofit’s involvement.

Kelley’s covariation principle suggests that individuals assess consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency to assign causality. If consumers lack complete corporate information, they rely on heuristic cues. The presence of an esteemed, morally untainted nonprofit provides high positive distinctiveness, leading consumers to attribute benevolent motives to the firm and infer that the nonprofit actively vetted and approved the brand.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM)

Developed by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright (1994), the PKM outlines how targets of persuasion develop and utilize knowledge about persuasion tactics to interpret, evaluate, and respond to influence attempts. Over time, consumers construct “persuasion coping mechanisms.” In the context of standard commercial advertising, consumer persuasion knowledge triggers skepticism. However, when an ad integrates a respected nonprofit organization, the commercial nature of the communication is partially masked. The inclusion of the NPO alters the perceived agent-target dynamic, dampening critical defense mechanisms and facilitating the inference that the NPO serves as an objective, benevolent third-party validator.

Meaning Transfer Model

Originally formulated by McCracken (1989) to explain celebrity endorsements, the Meaning Transfer Model posits that cultural meanings, values, and symbolic associations migrate from the endorser to the endorsed product, and subsequently from the product to the consumer. Bower and Landreth Grau (2009) extended this framework to institutional entities. Nonprofit organizations possess rich constellations of cultural meaning: altruism, integrity, moral rectitude, and non-commercial public service. When a corporate brand enters an alliance with an NPO, these institutional meanings transfer to the commercial brand. The EBNO scale quantifies the psychological realization of this meaning transfer—specifically, whether the consumer believes the NPO has transferred its institutional credibility to validate the product.

7. Validity

The validation of the EBNO scale followed rigorous psychometric procedures across multiple experimental and survey studies, providing comprehensive evidence for construct, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was established by demonstrating that the items coherently converge on the single theoretical domain of perceived nonprofit endorsement. In the primary validation studies by Bower and Landreth Grau (2009), standardized factor loadings for all 7 items were substantial, ranging from .76 to .92 (all p < .001). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) consistently surpassed the established benchmark of .50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), typically falling between .64 and .73 across experimental groups. This confirms that more than half of the variance in the indicator variables is attributable to the underlying EBNO construct rather than measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

To demonstrate that the EBNO scale does not simply measure generalized positive attitudes toward the firm or the advertisement, discriminant validity was evaluated against several related constructs:

• Attitude toward the Advertisement (A_ad): Assessed via multi-item semantic differential scales (e.g., favorable/unfavorable, good/bad). The shared variance (r²) between EBNO and A_ad remained well below the AVE of both individual constructs.
• Attitude toward the Brand (A_b): While correlated with EBNO as anticipated by nomological theory (r ≈ .35 to .48), the correlation was sufficiently low to demonstrate empirical distinctiveness.
• Perceived Altruism / Corporate Social Motivation: The scale successfully differentiated between the belief that a company is acting charitably and the specific cognitive inference that the NPO has certified or endorsed the product.

Nomological and Experimental Validity

The EBNO scale demonstrated strong nomological validity through controlled experimental manipulations. In experiments manipulating advertisement copy (e.g., explicit donation claims vs. explicit endorsement claims vs. combined claims), the EBNO scale accurately captured systematic variance:

• Conditions featuring explicit endorsement copy yielded the highest EBNO mean scores (M > 5.80 on a 7-point scale).
• Crucially, conditions presenting only explicit donation information yielded moderate to high EBNO scores (M ≈ 4.40 to 4.90), significantly higher than control advertisements containing no NPO mention (M < 2.50). This empirical shift substantiated the scale’s sensitivity to inferred endorsements.

8. Reliability

The EBNO scale exhibits exceptional reliability across diverse populations, stimulus categories, and experimental conditions. Multiple psychometric indices demonstrate high internal consistency and measurement precision:

Internal Consistency Reliability

Across the experimental investigations reported in the original validation literature (Bower & Landreth Grau, 2009), the scale yielded the following reliability statistics:

• Study 1: Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across experimental conditions ranged from α = .91 to α = .94, well exceeding the classic Nunnally & Bernstein (1994) standard of .70 for basic research and .90 for applied decision-making contexts.
• Study 2: In subsequent replications testing alternative product categories and cause types, Cronbach’s alpha remained consistently high at α = .93.
• Composite Reliability (ρ_c): Structural equation modeling evaluations produced composite reliability coefficients exceeding .92, confirming that the scale indicators consistently capture true score variance.

Item-Total and Inter-Item Correlations

Diagnostic analyses of item characteristics demonstrate high stability:

• Corrected item-total correlations consistently range between .68 and .85, indicating that no single item diverges from the core latent construct.
• Inter-item correlations average between .55 and .75, showing robust inter-relatedness without excessive item redundancy or multicollinearity.
• Scale deletion metrics confirm that eliminating any of the 7 individual items does not increase the overall Cronbach’s alpha, confirming an optimal and efficient set of indicators.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the 7-item EBNO scale was rigorously evaluated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial exploratory factor analysis conducted via Principal Axis Factoring and Principal Component Analysis with orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations demonstrated clear unidimensionality:

• A single dominant factor emerged, accounting for approximately 68% to 74% of the total variance across validation datasets.
• The primary eigenvalue substantially exceeded Kaiser’s criterion (λ > 1.0), typically recording values between 4.80 and 5.20. The second factor yielded an eigenvalue far below 1.0 (typically < 0.55).
• Inspection of Cattell’s scree plot revealed a distinct, unambiguous “elbow” after the first factor, confirming a single-factor solution.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm the stability of the unidimensional model, CFA was executed using maximum likelihood estimation in structural equation modeling software. The fit statistics confirmed that the 7-item single-factor model reproduces the observed covariance matrix exceptionally well:

Standardized factor loadings across all items ranged from λ = .76 to .92, confirming that all 7 indicators contribute substantially to the operationalization of the latent construct without necessity for post-hoc modification indices or correlated error terms.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization scale is structured as a standardized, self-report psychometric questionnaire designed for rapid integration into experimental, survey, and consumer panel methodologies.

• Instrument Designation: Endorsement by Nonprofit Organization (EBNO) Scale.
• Primary Application: Measurement of perceived organizational endorsement, quality approval, and institutional certification in marketing and advertising stimuli.
• Administration Format: Computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), laboratory questionnaire, or paper-and-pencil instrument.
• Completion Duration: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes for the full 7-item inventory.
• Target Population: Adult consumers, student research subject pools, business professionals, and policy analysts evaluating commercial marketing materials.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert response options, anchored as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Methodology:
  • All 7 items are typically worded in a direct, positively valenced direction reflecting perceived endorsement.
  • A composite score is calculated either by taking the arithmetic mean of all 7 completed items (yielding a continuous scale score from 1.00 to 7.00) or by calculating a summed aggregate score (ranging from 7 to 49).
  • Higher composite scores denote stronger consumer convictions that the nonprofit organization explicitly certifies, recommends, and endorses the commercial entity.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The EBNO scale was published in 2009 in the Journal of Advertising. Regarding accessibility, licensing, and intellectual property:

• Publication Year: 2009.
• Copyright Ownership: The original article and its formatting are copyrighted by the American Academy of Advertising, with publishing and distribution managed by Taylor & Francis Group.
• Academic Research Usage: Under established academic conventions of fair use, the scale may be freely utilized by non-commercial researchers, university scholars, and graduate students for academic, educational, and scientific investigations, provided full bibliographic citation is given to Bower and Landreth Grau (2009).
• Commercial and Proprietary Licensing: Commercial corporations, market research agencies, and regulatory litigation consultants seeking to utilize the scale for commercial benchmarking, expert witness testimony, or revenue-generating services should obtain appropriate copyright clearance or permission via the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) / RightsLink service associated with Taylor & Francis.
• Cost: There are no per-administration fees for academic, non-commercial research.

12. References

The theoretical, empirical, and psychometric foundations of the EBNO scale are detailed in the following core literature:

• Bower, A. B., & Landreth Grau, S. (2009). Explicit donations and inferred endorsements: Do corporate social responsibility initiatives suggest a nonprofit organization endorsement? Journal of Advertising, 38(3), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367380308
• 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
• Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28(2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034225
• Landreth Grau, S., & Folse, J. A. G. (2007). Cause-related marketing (CRM): The influence of donation proximity and message-framing cues on the less-involved consumer. Journal of Advertising, 36(4), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367360402
• McCracken, G. (1989). Who is the celebrity endorser? Cultural foundations of the endorsement process. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(3), 310–321. https://doi.org/10.1086/209217
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.

13. Items of the Scale