Assessment ScalesBehavioral EconomicsConsumer PsychologyPsychometrics

Product Retention Tendency Scale

The Product Retention Tendency (PRT) Scale, developed by Haws, Naylor, Coulter, and Bearden (2012), is a validated psychometric instrument measuring non-clinical consumer reluctance to dispose of possessions and its impact on clutter, divestment, and trade-in resistance.

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Scientifically Reviewed · Dr. Marwa Abd-Alazim · September 11, 2026
Medically & Scientifically Reviewed Verified: September 11, 2026
Dr. Marwa Abd-Alazim Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology • University of Kerbala
Review Criteria & Clinical Standards

This content undergoes rigorous scientific peer-review and medical editorial standards at Arab Psychology Network to ensure clinical accuracy, validity, and compliance with evidence-based guidelines from leading psychological and healthcare authorities (APA / WHO).

1. Abstract

The Product Retention Tendency (PRT) Scale is a psychometric instrument designed to assess individual differences in consumer reluctance to dispose of, discard, or part with material possessions. Originally developed and empirically validated by Kelly L. Haws, Rebecca Walker Naylor, Robin A. Coulter, and William O. Bearden (2012), the scale addresses a critical lacuna in consumer psychology and behavioral economics by isolating normative, non-clinical non-disposal behaviors. Across five rigorous empirical investigations encompassing both university undergraduate cohorts and diverse adult non-student populations, the PRT scale has exhibited robust psychometric properties. Internal consistency estimates systematically range between Cronbach's α = 0.83 and 0.88 across varied administrations, alongside an established four-week test-retest reliability coefficient of r = 0.72.

Structurally, the scale captures non-disposal propensities as a unified behavioral pattern undergirded by dual cognitive-affective mechanisms: functional rationalizations regarding anticipated future utility (e.g., the 'I might need it someday' heuristic) and an acute emotional reluctance to sever bonds with possessions holding residual economic or sentimental value. Critically, the instrument demonstrates marked discriminant validity against clinical obsessive-compulsive hoarding pathology (r = 0.42), showing that while it shares conceptual variance with retention behavior, it operates predominantly within a non-clinical spectrum. Furthermore, it diverges decisively from classic possessiveness (r = 0.41) and general materialism (r = 0.29). Predictive validity analyses confirm that elevated PRT scores forecast severe household clutter, acute decision paralysis during divestment opportunities, accumulation of surplus durable goods, and profound resistance to circular business models such as trade-in programs, leasing, or subscription upgrades. Administered on a multi-point Likert response metric, the PRT provides researchers and marketing strategists with a rigorous diagnostic framework for evaluating consumer divestment resistance and post-acquisition material management.

2. Keywords

Product Retention Tendency, consumer divestment, psychometrics, material retention, disposal behavior, consumer psychology, hoarding behavior, clutter, possession attachment, scale validation

3. Authors

The Product Retention Tendency Scale was developed and published in 2012 by an esteemed team of scholars in marketing and consumer psychology:

  • Kelly L. Haws, Ph.D. — Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Her research focuses on consumer self-control, decision-making, consumer welfare, and behavioral economics.
  • Rebecca Walker Naylor, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Her scholarly inquiry centers on social influence, consumer judgment, word-of-mouth dynamics, and interpersonal product evaluations.
  • Robin A. Coulter, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA. Her research investigates the emotional, relational, and self-identity connections consumers forge with brands, products, and possessions.
  • William O. Bearden, Ph.D. — Bank of America Chaired Professor of Marketing Emeritus at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA. A preeminent authority on scale development and measurement methodology in consumer research and social psychology.

4. Purpose

The acquisition phase of the consumer journey has historically monopolized theoretical and empirical inquiry within marketing and applied behavioral science. For decades, researchers scrutinized the cognitive, affective, and motivational precursors leading to purchasing decisions, largely treating post-purchase disposition as an afterthought or a passive terminal event. The Product Retention Tendency (PRT) Scale was engineered specifically to rectify this fundamental theoretical imbalance by measuring the persistent propensity of individuals to hold onto items, retain possessions, and delay or outright reject product disposal decisions.

The theoretical rationale underpinning the PRT scale posits that retention is neither simply the passive inverse of acquisition nor an exact proxy for clinical hoarding. While individuals frequently acquire goods with clear utilitarian, hedonic, or symbolic intent, the decision to retain an item after its primary functional lifecycle has diminished involves complex post-acquisition psychological mechanisms. Consumers frequently experience psychological friction when confronted with the prospect of divestment. The PRT scale captures this friction, quantifying how individuals rationalize retention via cognitive projections of future contingencies (hypothesizing improbable future needs) and affective resistance rooted in perceived residual value, sunk costs, and psychological ownership.

In applied academic research, the PRT scale serves as a standard diagnostic tool across multiple sub-disciplines:

  • Sustainable Consumption and Circular Economy: In an era increasingly dominated by sustainability initiatives, closed-loop supply chains, and reverse logistics, understanding consumer unwillingness to return, recycle, or trade in depreciated electronics, vehicles, and apparel is paramount. The PRT scale explains systemic consumer bottlenecks in product recovery systems.
  • Household and Spatial Organization: Sociologists and environmental psychologists utilize the PRT scale to investigate domestic clutter, residential overcrowding, and the psychological stressors associated with over-accumulated living spaces among non-clinical populations.
  • Promotional Architecture and Bundling Response: High-PRT consumers exhibit disproportionately elevated susceptibility to promotional formats that offer gratuitous items, such as 'gift with purchase' (GWP), bundle packages, and volume-discount incentives, while simultaneously resisting trade-in programs, subscription-based servitization models, and leasing arrangements that require surrendering existing belongings.
  • Sub-clinical Behavioral Profiling: Mental health researchers and counseling practitioners deploy the PRT scale to examine everyday consumer attachment patterns that lie below diagnostic thresholds for DSM-5 Hoarding Disorder, offering nuanced insights into early-stage accumulation habits before severe functional impairment occurs.

5. Psychological Construct

The Product Retention Tendency construct refers to an individual's dispositional inclination to retain possessions across varied product categories, characterized by a chronic reluctance to part with items, deliberate postponement of divestment opportunities, and systematic cognitive rationalization of continued ownership. Rather than representing an idiosyncratic, product-specific attachment, PRT functions as a generalized, stable behavioral tendency that manifests across multiple facets of a consumer's material ecosystem.

Theoretical and empirical deconstruction reveals that the PRT construct operates across two interrelated cognitive-affective dimensions:

1. Functional Utility Rationalization

The functional dimension of product retention reflects an exaggerated cognitive reliance on anticipated, hypothetical future utility—commonly designated as the 'I might need it someday' heuristic. Individuals high in this dimension perceive prospective value in items whose current functional utility has degraded to near-zero. When evaluating whether to discard an obsolete computer cable, a worn garment, an outdated textbook, or an extra piece of kitchenware, the consumer engages in imaginative prospective scenarios where the object could theoretically serve an unforeseen purpose. Divestment is viewed as an unacceptable risk of future regret or economic inefficiency. This cognitive bias interacts strongly with risk aversion and the psychological pain of replacement costs, causing the individual to prioritize the hypothetical certainty of retention over the immediate spatial and mental clarity of disposal.

2. Affective Attachment and Residual Value Valuation

The affective dimension of PRT involves an emotional reluctance to discard possessions that possess personal history, sentimental significance, or perceived unexhausted economic life. Even when an item has no realistic functional utility, high-PRT individuals experience genuine emotional discomfort when attempting to sever physical ties with it. Possessions become extensions of the autobiographical narrative; letting go is emotionally coded as discarding a memory, betraying the giver of a gift, or violating the intrinsic 'worth' of a manufactured object. Furthermore, high-PRT consumers frequently suffer from an amplified sunk cost fallacy, where the initial financial investment continues to dictate current retention behavior, regardless of how thoroughly the good has depreciated.

Boundary Conditions and Moderating Variables

The psychological construct of PRT does not operate in a vacuum. Haws et al. (2012) established several systematic moderating factors that dictate the intensity of PRT manifestations in actual consumer behavior:

  • Financial Resources: Consumers with lower economic buffers exhibit a substantially stronger association between high PRT scores and physical household clutter. When financial resources are scarce, functional rationalizations carry objective survival value, intensifying the perceived risk of premature disposal.
  • Life Stage and Age: Chronological age positively correlates with retention tendencies. As consumers transition through life stages, accumulated historical investments, sentimental associations, and cognitive habits reinforce divestment resistance.
  • Product Typology: Retention tendencies manifest with differential intensity depending on product classification. Durable goods (e.g., tools, electronics, appliances), sentimental keepsakes (e.g., memorabilia, family heirlooms), and unsolicited gifts evoke significantly higher retention thresholds than consumable, perishable, or rapidly deteriorating products.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Product Retention Tendency Scale is grounded in several foundational paradigms of cognitive psychology, microeconomic decision theory, and consumer behavior:

1. The Endowment Effect and Prospect Theory

Originating from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's Prospect Theory (1979) and formalized in behavioral economics by Richard Thaler (1980), the endowment effect demonstrates that individuals place a higher monetary and psychological value on objects simply because they own them. Divestment requires relinquishing an item, which prospect theory frames as a subjective loss. Because loss aversion dictates that losses loom substantially larger than equivalent gains, the perceived pain of parting with a possession consistently outweighs the potential benefits of spatial liberation or financial compensation from selling it. High-PRT consumers exhibit an amplified manifestation of this endowment bias across ordinary household goods.

2. The Extended Self Hypothesis

In consumer research, Russell W. Belk's (1988) seminal formulation of the 'Extended Self' asserts that our possessions are not merely external physical tools, but vital constituents of our personal identity and self-concept. Under this framework, discarding an item represents a symbolic amputation of the self. Retaining items preserves personal history, past social roles, and aspirational identities. PRT builds upon this theoretical foundation by operationalizing the psychological inertia that prevents consumers from separating their self-identity from material artifacts that have outlived their active utility.

3. Mental Accounting and Sunk Cost Bias

According to Thaler's (1985, 1999) mental accounting theory, consumers maintain internal, psychological cognitive ledgers for their transactions. When an individual purchases a product, a mental account is opened with a debit balance. That account is progressively amortized or credited through subsequent consumption and usage. If an item is discarded before the consumer perceives that its value has been entirely exhausted, the mental account must be formally closed at an emotional and financial loss. Retaining the item in a closet, garage, or attic allows the consumer to indefinitely postpone closing that mental account, avoiding the psychological realization of waste.

7. Validity

The Product Retention Tendency Scale has undergone thorough empirical validation across multiple studies, demonstrating high construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

To confirm that PRT measures a distinct, non-pathological consumer behavior, Haws et al. (2012) tested correlations between PRT and several conceptually related constructs:

  • Clinical Hoarding Pathology: Using established clinical instruments such as the Saving Inventory-Revised (Frost et al., 2004), the PRT scale correlated moderately at r = 0.42. This moderate correlation proves that while PRT shares common behavioral features with hoarding, the vast majority of variance (>82%) is unshared. Crucially, PRT distributions remain normalized and operate reliably within the non-clinical general population, free from the clinical distress and occupational dysfunction that characterize psychiatric hoarding.
  • Possessiveness: Correlated with Belk's (1985) possessiveness subscale of the Materialism scale at r = 0.41, confirming that PRT is related to the desire for control and ownership over goods, yet diverges by emphasizing the post-acquisition retention and non-disposal phase rather than an ongoing defense against loss.
  • Materialism: Evaluated against Richins and Dawson's (1992) Material Values Scale (MVS), the PRT showed only a modest correlation (r = 0.29). This demonstrates that high-PRT individuals are not necessarily materialistic status-seekers driven by acquisition; rather, their behavioral focus is preserving existing possessions regardless of their symbolic status value.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

Across extensive laboratory experiments and field studies, the PRT scale has repeatedly predicted real-world behavioral outcomes:

  • Household Clutter: High PRT scores systematically predict elevated levels of physical clutter in living spaces (measured through photographic audit and validated clutter inventories), particularly in lower-income demographics where functional rationalizations are amplified.
  • Disposal Decision Inertia: When placed in controlled laboratory disposal situations, high-PRT participants experience significant decision latency, subjective cognitive conflict, and emotional distress when instructed to choose items for donation or recycling.
  • Reluctance Toward Modern Business Models: High-PRT consumers demonstrate heightened resistance to trade-in incentives (e.g., returning an older smartphone for a discount on a new one), car leases, apparel rental platforms, and cloud-based subscription models that require surrendering physical custody of an asset.
  • Promotional Vulnerability: When offered marketing incentives involving physical gifts, bundle upgrades, or excess units (e.g., 'Buy One, Get One Free'), high-PRT individuals accept surplus items at significantly higher rates, further compounding domestic material accumulation.

8. Reliability

The Product Retention Tendency Scale exhibits exemplary reliability across diverse demographic cohorts, experimental designs, and temporal intervals.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Across the five primary validation studies conducted by Haws et al. (2012), the scale demonstrated consistently elevated internal reliability coefficients. In both university undergraduate samples and diverse nationwide non-student adult panels, Cronbach's α values ranged reliably between 0.83 and 0.88. Composite reliability coefficients calculated via structural equation modeling systematically exceeded 0.85, comfortably surpassing the conventional 0.70 psychometric benchmark recommended for academic research.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

To establish the longitudinal stability of the construct as an enduring behavioral disposition rather than a transient, situational mood state, the authors administered the PRT scale to a dedicated participant cohort across a four-week interval. The test-retest reliability coefficient was established at r = 0.72 (p < .001). This robust temporal coefficient confirms that individual product retention tendencies represent a stable, enduring personality trait that remains consistent across time.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural integrity of the PRT scale was established through sequential Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by rigorous Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across independent respondent datasets.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development, a broad pool of candidate items generated from qualitative consumer interviews and theoretical literature was subjected to exploratory factor extraction using maximum likelihood estimation with both varimax and promax (oblique) rotations. The empirical data decisively favored a clean factor structure where the primary items loaded heavily onto the focal retention construct (item loadings ranging between 0.62 and 0.84). The first unrotated factor accounted for the vast majority of total variance, with eigenvalues dropping sharply thereafter (scree plot analysis displaying a prominent inflection point after the primary retention factor).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

In subsequent validation studies utilizing independent consumer samples, CFA was executed using structural equation modeling software (e.g., LISREL / AMOS) to verify scale unidimensionality and assess overall goodness-of-fit. The empirical data demonstrated excellent fit across conventional psychometric indices:

  • Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values systematically exceeded 0.95 (ranging from 0.96 to 0.98), indicating outstanding fit relative to the baseline null model.
  • Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI / NNFI): Ranged consistently between 0.95 and 0.97.
  • Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values fell comfortably below the strict 0.06 threshold (typically 0.045 to 0.056), with 90% confidence intervals confirming strong model fit.
  • Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Recorded below 0.04 across cross-validation samples.

All standardized item loadings in the final measurement model were statistically significant (p < .001) and substantial (all standardized λ > 0.60), confirming that each item reliably reflects the underlying latent Product Retention Tendency construct without excessive cross-loadings or correlated error variances.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Product Retention Tendency (PRT) scale is a self-report psychometric questionnaire designed for administration in laboratory experiments, consumer field surveys, and diagnostic research settings.

  • Instrument Name: Product Retention Tendency Scale (PRT)
  • Construct Assessed: Individual consumer reluctance to discard, donate, or dispose of possessions, driven by functional and emotional rationalizations.
  • Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaire, or digital survey (Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, RedCap, etc.).
  • Completion Time: Approximately 2 to 4 minutes.
  • Target Population: Adult consumers (general non-clinical population aged 18 and older).
  • Item Count: Standard full version consists of 8 carefully refined items (abbreviated or subset versions occasionally adapted for specialized experimental contexts).
  • Response Scale Metric: Administered on a 7-point Likert response scale:
    • 1 = Strongly Disagree
    • 2 = Disagree
    • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
    • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
    • 5 = Somewhat Agree
    • 6 = Agree
    • 7 = Strongly Agree
  • Scoring Methodology:
    • Items are formulated such that higher ratings directly indicate greater product retention tendencies (check original publication for any reverse-coded verification items).
    • An aggregate PRT composite score is generated by computing the arithmetic mean across all items (ranging from 1.00 to 7.00), or by summing individual item ratings.
    • Higher aggregate scores indicate an acute tendency to retain possessions, difficulty in product disposal, elevated susceptibility to clutter, and heightened resistance to product trade-in or divestment programs.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Product Retention Tendency Scale was officially introduced and published in 2012 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Licensing and Academic Access: The scale is protected under academic copyright held by the authors and the Society for Consumer Psychology (published by Elsevier / Wiley). The measurement instrument is generally available free of charge for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical purposes, and non-profit scholarly investigations, provided that appropriate bibliographic citation is accorded to Haws et al. (2012). Any commercial, corporate consulting, or proprietary diagnostic application requires explicit formal permission and potential licensing agreements from the copyright holders and publishers. Researchers wishing to reproduce the complete item set in publications or commercial diagnostic tools should consult the primary source article or contact the corresponding author.

12. References

Below are primary foundational references documenting the conceptual development, validation, and theoretical framework of the Product Retention Tendency Scale:

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