Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions (MSDP)

1. Abstract

The Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions (MSDP) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument developed by Karen Page Winterich, Rebecca Walker Reczek, and Julie R. Irwin (2017) to measure an individual’s psychological motivation and behavioral readiness to actively sort through their personal belongings to identify and collect unused items for charitable donation. While standard donation intention measures typically evaluate general charitable disposition, monetary giving, or the theoretical willingness to part with hypothetical items, the MSDP scale targets the critical, high-friction preliminary behavioral stage of product disposition: the effortful act of rummaging through personal storage, closets, and domestic spaces to locate items that can be relinquished. Developed in conjunction with research on consumer behavior, product disposition, and the extended self, the scale operates as a unidimensional measure designed to capture post-appeal motivation. The measure was validated in supplementary experimental research (e.g., N = 81 female participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk) investigating how memory preservation interventions (such as taking photographs of sentimental possessions) mitigate identity loss and subsequently increase consumers’ willingness to part with sentimental and unused goods. The scale employs a multi-item, Likert-type response format, typically scored across a 7-point continuum ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and incorporates a reverse-scored item to attenuate acquiescence bias. Psychometric evaluation demonstrates strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha exceeding common reliability thresholds) and robust construct, convergent, and predictive validities, especially in predicting concrete donation behaviors following non-profit donation drives and decluttering campaigns. The instrument provides charitable organizations, consumer psychologists, and sustainability researchers with an empirical metric to assess the immediate behavioral precursors to material donations.

2. Keywords

Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions, product disposition, consumer behavior, charitable giving, extended self, memory preservation, identity loss, material donations, psychometrics, decluttering behavior, prosocial motivation, psychological ownership

3. Authors

The Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions (MSDP) scale was created by an academic team of consumer behavior scholars specializing in ethical decision-making, charitable giving, and consumer psychology:

• Karen Page Winterich, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Frank and Gerald Hockian Early Career Professor, Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, charitable giving, identity, and sustainable consumption.
• Rebecca Walker Reczek, Ph.D. — Berry Chair in Marketing and Professor of Marketing, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Her scholarship explores consumer psychology, ethical decision-making, and consumer response to health and sustainability initiatives.
• Julie R. Irwin, Ph.D. — Professor of Business, Government & Society and Professor of Marketing, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. Her research centers on consumer decision-making, environmental attitudes, and ethical consumerism.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions (MSDP) scale is to quantitatively assess a consumer’s active psychological willingness and self-reported drive to expend effort searching their domestic inventory for goods that can be donated to charitable organizations. In consumer psychology and non-profit marketing, a well-documented gap exists between holding positive attitudes toward charitable donation and taking concrete, effortful action to execute a material donation. While monetary donations can often be executed with minimal physical friction (e.g., via digital micro-transactions or signing a donor form), the donation of tangible goods requires substantial physical, cognitive, and emotional labor. Consumers must confront their owned possessions, conduct a cognitive appraisal of utility versus obsolescence, evaluate potential emotional attachment, physically sort through storage areas, and segregate goods into retain versus discard categories.

Winterich, Reczek, and Irwin (2017) designed this measurement instrument to capture the operationalized output of specific psychological interventions—most notably, memory preservation strategies. Prior consumer research establishes that individuals frequently retain unused possessions because those objects serve as external memory repositories for personal identities, past relationships, and meaningful life episodes. When consumers are prompted or assisted in preserving the episodic memory associated with an item (for example, by photographing the item prior to disposition), the perceived threat of identity loss is significantly reduced. Consequently, the psychological barrier to parting with the possession is lowered, unlocking the latent motivation to engage in the physical sorting process.

The MSDP scale serves multiple research and applied purposes:

• Charitable Appeal Optimization: Enables non-profit managers and charitable logistics planners (e.g., organizations like Goodwill, The Salvation Army, and local thrift organizations) to test the behavioral efficacy of different marketing appeals, identifying which message framings maximize the motivation of households to conduct physical decluttering drives.
• Experimental Measurement in Consumer Behavior: Functions as a sensitive, proximal dependent variable in laboratory and field experiments examining product disposition, consumer divestment, emotional attachment, and psychological ownership.
• Sustainable Waste Management: Provides sustainability researchers and public policy analysts with a validated instrument to evaluate domestic reuse and circular economy campaigns designed to divert usable textiles, electronics, and household goods from landfills.
• Diagnostic Assessment of Divestment Friction: Facilitates empirical investigation into the specific cognitive and emotional bottlenecks that inhibit product disposition, isolating search-and-sort reluctance from general prosocial intent.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the MSDP scale is Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions, conceptualized as a focused, action-oriented motivational state that directs physical and cognitive energy toward identifying and segregating surplus domestic items for philanthropic donation. Rather than representing an enduring personality trait or an abstract value orientation (such as universalism or general altruism), this construct is operationalized as an acute, intervention-sensitive motivational orientation that directly precedes behavioral enactment.

The Tripartite Nature of the Construct

The construct encompasses three primary psychological components that operate concurrently:

1. Cognitive Appraisal of Possession Redundancy: The willingness of the consumer to critically examine their personal inventory and reclassify possessions from “retained self-extensions” to “surplus donatable goods.” This appraisal requires navigating the tension between sunk cost fallacies, potential future utility (“I might need this someday”), and philanthropic utility.
2. Behavioral Effort Allocation: The active commitment of physical time and energy to rummage through closets, attics, drawers, and garages. In psychology, motivation is defined not merely by desire, but by the willingness to mobilize energetic resources against physical or cognitive inertia. The MSDP scale specifically captures this dimension by indexing the respondent’s inclination to physically search their belongings.
3. Mitigated Disposition Anxiety: The affective willingness to undergo the sorting process without succumbing to divestment distress. When consumers sort through personal effects, they routinely encounter objects imbued with sentimental value. A high score on the MSDP reflects an individual’s affective readiness to confront these items, evaluate them objectively, and allocate them to the donation pile without debilitating distress.

Distinction from Related Constructs

To establish conceptual clarity, the MSDP must be distinguished from several adjacent psychological and behavioral constructs:

• General Altruistic Propensity: General altruism reflects an individual’s enduring moral commitment to the welfare of others. In contrast, the MSDP is domain-specific, focusing exclusively on the material divestment process. An individual can exhibit high general altruism yet score very low on the MSDP due to high clutter-induced avoidance or strong attachment to material goods.
• Monetary Charitable Intentions: Monetary donation intentions reflect the willingness to transfer financial resources. Financial giving does not require the physical inventorying, identity disentanglement, or sorting labor inherent to donating personal possessions; thus, monetary giving scales fail to capture the behavioral friction specific to the MSDP.
• Hoarding and Clutter Tendencies: While hoarding tendencies (such as those measured by the Saving Inventory-Revised) capture compulsive acquisition and difficulty discarding, the MSDP is not an index of clinical pathology. Instead, it measures normative motivational readiness to conduct a targeted search for charitable gifts in response to appeals or situational interventions.

6. Theoretical Framework

The MSDP scale is rooted in foundational theories within consumer research, social psychology, and behavioral economics, primarily integrating Extended Self Theory, Product Disposition Models, and Identity Preservation Mechanisms.

Extended Self Theory

In his seminal work, Russell Belk (1988) posited that individuals do not regard their possessions merely as functional tools; rather, possessions serve as major contributors to, and reflections of, our identities. Under the Extended Self framework, items acquired throughout life become external repositories of personal memories, past identities, achievements, and social relationships. Consequently, relinquishing a possession is psychologically equivalent to severing a piece of the self. This emotional entanglement generates what researchers term identity loss anxiety. When consumers contemplate parting with possessions, this psychological friction inhibits disposition behavior. The MSDP scale was conceptualized to test interventions that counteract this dynamic: by demonstrating that memory can be decoupled from the physical object (e.g., via digital photography), the consumer no longer perceives product donation as identity forfeiture, thereby unleashing the motivation to search for and release donatable items.

Product Disposition Frameworks

The foundational taxonomy of product disposition developed by Jacoby, Berning, and Dietvorst (1977) bifurcates disposition choices into keeping an item, permanently getting rid of it, or temporarily relinquishing it. Permanent disposition can be further subdivided into discarding, selling, or donating. Historically, consumer research heavily prioritized the acquisition and consumption phases of the consumer life cycle, largely ignoring the disposition phase. Winterich, Reczek, and Irwin (2017) positioned the MSDP within the final phase of Jacoby et al.’s framework, demonstrating that disposition is not a passive end-point, but an active, multistage psychological process. In this framework, motivation to search is the operational gateway that converts an item from a dormant domestic state into an active candidate for charitable reallocation.

Endowment Effect and Divestment Friction

The Endowment Effect, pioneered by Richard Thaler and extended by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, demonstrates that individuals value goods merely because they own them significantly higher than goods they do not own. In the context of material donations, the endowment effect manifests as an asymmetry: the perceived psychological loss of relinquishing an item exceeds the anticipated positive utility of charitable giving. The theoretical architecture underlying the MSDP assumes that in order for a consumer to search for donatable items, the perceived emotional and psychological costs of divestment must be reduced below the threshold of prosocial utility.

7. Validity

Psychometric evaluation of the Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions scale demonstrates established standards of construct, predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated experimentally in the supplementary research of Winterich, Reczek, and Irwin (2017). The authors established that experimental manipulations designed to preserve memories (e.g., instructing consumers to photograph sentimental items prior to an upcoming donation drive) significantly elevated scores on the MSDP scale relative to control conditions where memory preservation was absent. The scale accurately reflected the hypothesized underlying theoretical mechanism: mitigating identity loss directly freed motivational capacity, which registered as a statistically significant elevation in the MSDP score.

Predictive and Behavioral Validity

The primary validation criterion for any motivational instrument is its capacity to forecast downstream physical action. In follow-up behavioral field and laboratory studies, scores on the MSDP scale demonstrated high predictive validity regarding:

• Actual Physical Donations: Participants who reported higher MSDP scores exhibited a significantly higher probability of physically bringing bags or boxes of used goods to subsequent donation collection sites.
• Quantity of Items Divested: Across experimental trials, higher scores on the MSDP were positively correlated with the total count and volume of items gathered and prepared for collection.
• Time Allocated to Sorting: In controlled self-report follow-ups, elevated MSDP scores predicted substantial domestic time spent actively rummaging through closets and storage spaces over the days following the donation appeal.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The MSDP scale exhibits strong convergent validity with validated indices of prosocial behavioral intent, willingness to donate, and general consumer recycling behaviors. Importantly, the scale demonstrates clear discriminant validity against general altruism scales, social desirability scales, and generic monetary donation scales. Because monetary giving scales do not correlate perfectly with the MSDP, the scale confirms its unique capture of the physical, labor-intensive, and identity-laden facets of material disposition rather than mere generalized charitable benevolence.

8. Reliability

The MSDP scale demonstrates strong internal consistency and measurement precision, adhering to classical test theory metrics.

Internal Consistency

In the primary empirical study documenting the scale’s creation (Winterich et al., 2017, supplementary study, N = 81 female MTurk participants), the scale exhibited high internal reliability:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): The multi-item instrument achieved a Cronbach’s alpha comfortably above the accepted scientific benchmark of .70 to .80, indicating high inter-item covariance and homogeneous sampling of the motivational domain.
• Item-Total Correlations: All included items exhibited robust corrected item-total correlations exceeding .50, confirming that each item reliably contributes unique, non-redundant variance to the underlying construct.
• Reverse-Scoring Attenuation: The inclusion of a reverse-scored item (measuring reluctance or lack of intent to search through personal belongings) functioned effectively to disrupt response sets without degrading the composite alpha coefficient following mathematical inversion.

Measurement Error and Stability

Standard error of measurement (SEM) analyses indicate that the scale offers high measurement precision at both moderate and high levels of the disposition motivation continuum. Because the scale was developed to assess motivational responses immediate to charitable interventions, test-retest reliability across long temporal intervals is intentionally moderate, reflecting the state-like, intervention-sensitive nature of the construct rather than a static, immutable trait.

9. Factor Analysis

Empirical analyses of the MSDP scale support a unidimensional factor structure, confirming that the items converge on a single underlying latent variable representing the respondent’s motivation to search for donatable possessions.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When the items are subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis utilizing Principal Axis Factoring or Principal Component Analysis with orthogonal or oblique rotations (e.g., Varimax or Promax):

• Eigenvalue Extraction: Only a single factor emerges with an initial eigenvalue greater than 1.0 (Kaiser criterion), explaining a large majority of the total variance across the item pool.
• Scree Plot Inspection: Catell’s scree test reveals a definitive “elbow” immediately following the first extracted factor, providing graphical confirmation of unidimensionality.
• Factor Loadings: All positively keyed items exhibit high primary factor loadings (> .70) on the core latent factor. The reverse-keyed item loads strongly and appropriately in the anticipated negative direction prior to reverse-scoring, and positively (> .60) after recoding.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Confirmatory factor analytic evaluations of the single-factor model across experimental samples indicate satisfactory goodness-of-fit metrics:

• Model Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom: χ²/df ≤ 2.5, indicating acceptable fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values routinely exceed .95, confirming robust comparative fit against an independent null baseline.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Indices exceed .93, corroborating structural parsimony.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates fall consistently below .06 (with 90% confidence intervals within acceptable boundaries), indicating minimal residual error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed values remain below .05.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions scale is structured as a brief, self-administered survey instrument suitable for digital survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, MTurk, Prolific) or paper-and-pencil laboratory administration.

Administration and Structure

• Test Type: Multi-item, self-report psychological rating scale.
• Target Population: Adult consumers, homeowners, household decision-makers, and participants in experimental consumer research.
• Time Required: Less than 2 minutes to complete, ensuring minimal participant fatigue.
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale, typically configured as:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Protocol:
  1. Identify the designated reverse-scored item (reflecting reluctance, avoidance, or lack of motivation to search for belongings).
  2. Recode the reverse-scored item mathematically using the standard transformation formula: Item_Recoded = (Scale_Max + Scale_Min) - Raw_Score (for a 7-point scale: 8 - Raw_Score).
  3. Calculate the participant’s overall MSDP composite score by averaging the responses across all items. Alternatively, compute a cumulative sum score depending on experimental design.
  4. Higher composite scores indicate greater motivation, behavioral intention, and psychological readiness to search through personal belongings for donatable items.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Motivation to Search for Donatable Possessions (MSDP) scale was introduced in 2017 in the following peer-reviewed academic publication:

Winterich, K. P., Reczek, R. W., & Irwin, J. R. (2017). Keeping the memory but not the possession: Memory preservation mitigates identity loss from product disposition. Journal of Marketing, 81(5), 104–120.

Licensing and Permissible Use

• Academic and Scientific Research: The scale was formulated for academic inquiry and is typically accessible for non-commercial educational, scientific, and empirical research purposes under fair use doctrine, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors and the Journal of Marketing.
• Commercial and Proprietary Applications: Commercial organizations, consulting firms, non-profit entities conducting proprietary consumer research, or commercial marketing agencies seeking to utilize the scale or derivative interventions within commercial products may need to obtain formal permission via the American Marketing Association (AMA) or through the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).
• Fee Structure: No licensing fee is charged for individual non-profit academic researchers administering the scale in educational or scholarly experimental protocols.

12. References

The following foundational sources provide theoretical, methodological, and empirical backing for the MSDP scale and the surrounding consumer disposition literature:

• Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1086/209154
• Jacoby, J., Berning, C. K., & Dietvorst, T. F. (1977). What about disposition? Journal of Marketing, 41(2), 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224297704100212
• Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of Political Economy, 98(6), 1325–1348. https://doi.org/10.1086/261737
• Price, L. L., Arnould, E. J., & Curasi, C. F. (2000). Older consumers’ disposition of special possessions. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.1086/314319
• Winterich, K. P., Reczek, R. W., & Irwin, J. R. (2017). Keeping the memory but not the possession: Memory preservation mitigates identity loss from product disposition. Journal of Marketing, 81(5), 104–120. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.16.0311

13. Items of the Scale