Time Availability Scale (TAVL)

Abstract

The Time Availability Scale (TAVL), introduced by Jordan Etkin, Ioannis Evangelidis, and Jennifer Aaker (2015), is a specialized psychometric instrument engineered to evaluate an individual's momentary, subjective appraisal of temporal sufficiency. Unlike traditional time-management inventories or objective chronometric logs that document absolute hours and minutes spent on discrete activities, the TAVL assesses the subjective feeling of being pressed for time versus possessing ample, unhurried temporal space. The instrument comprises five self-report items administered on a 7-point Likert scale. Conceptually, two items measure the experiential sense of time expansion and boundlessness, while three reverse-scored items capture felt time constriction, acute urgency, and perceived temporal insufficiency. Psychometric evaluations across experimental and field studies demonstrate that the TAVL possesses high internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients consistently ranging between .82 and .91 across diverse adult samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses validate a robust unidimensional structure that reflects an overarching construct of momentary perceived time availability, while effectively accounting for item polarity. The scale exhibits strong convergent validity with measures of perceived stress, temporal scarcity, and somatic anxiety, as well as distinct discriminant validity from trait conscientiousness, neuroticism, and actual chronological schedule density. The TAVL has emerged as an essential measurement tool in consumer behavior, social psychology, organizational psychology, and behavioral economics for assessing how psychological states—such as goal conflict, multi-tasking, and ambient stressors—distort temporal horizons and drive downstream decision-making.

Keywords

Time Availability Scale, subjective time perception, temporal scarcity, time poverty, time affluence, goal conflict, state measurement, psychometrics, psychological stress, consumer behavior

Authors

The Time Availability Scale was developed and validated by a team of scholars specializing in marketing, consumer psychology, and behavioral decision-making:

• Jordan Etkin, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Her research focuses on consumer motivation, goal pursuit, subjective perceptions of time, and personal well-being.
• Ioannis Evangelidis, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing at ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain. His scholarship investigates behavioral decision research, choice architecture, and judgment under uncertainty.
• Jennifer Aaker, Ph.D. — General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She is widely recognized for her research on the psychology of time, happiness, purpose, and behavioral science.

Purpose

In modern industrial and post-industrial societies, individuals frequently report an acute sense of “time poverty” or the pervasive feeling that they have too much to do and insufficient time to do it. Despite technological advances designed to automate labor and maximize efficiency, subjective temporal distress remains widespread. Psychologists and behavioral economists have long recognized that chronometric time—the objective physical passage of hours measured by clocks—often diverges dramatically from psychological time, which is malleable, context-dependent, and shaped by internal motivational states.

The primary purpose of the Time Availability Scale (TAVL) is to capture this immediate, phenomenological experience of time availability. The scale was specifically developed to resolve a critical measurement gap: prior instruments predominantly focused either on long-term, trait-level temporal orientations (such as time urgency or polychronicity) or on retrospective time-use diaries that tally chronological hours. Neither approach is sufficiently sensitive to detect subtle, state-level fluctuations in felt temporal resources induced by situational factors, psychological interventions, or cognitive conflicts.

Etkin, Evangelidis, and Aaker (2015) designed the TAVL to serve both experimental and diagnostic purposes. In research settings, the tool enables investigators to measure the immediate downstream psychological consequences of experimental manipulations, such as priming competing goals, inducing cognitive load, altering choice architecture, or introducing mindfulness practices. By capturing the subjective feeling of time abundance versus time constriction, the scale allows researchers to isolate subjective time perception as a critical psychological mediator between environmental antecedents (e.g., conflicting professional and personal demands) and behavioral outcomes (such as compromised health behaviors, reduced altruism, reliance on convenience goods, and diminished subjective well-being).

In applied organizational and clinical contexts, the TAVL provides human resource professionals, organizational psychologists, and executive coaches with a rapid, low-burden diagnostic instrument. It can monitor employee burnout risks, assess the immediate psychological strain imposed by multi-tasking environments, and evaluate the efficacy of workplace interventions aimed at cultivating temporal affluence. Because it measures the present-moment psychological bandwidth of the respondent, it serves as a sensitive barometer of acute cognitive overload and temporal stress.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the TAVL is subjective time availability, defined as an individual's immediate cognitive and emotional appraisal of the extent to which their current temporal resources are adequate, expansive, and manageable versus scarce, constrained, and suffocating. This construct is explicitly conceptualized as a psychological state rather than a stable personality trait or an objective accounting of free hours.

Subjective time availability comprises two complementary experiential poles along a continuous latent continuum:

1. Time Expansion and Boundlessness

At the positive pole of the construct is the subjective experience of time expansion, commonly described in psychological literature as “time affluence.” When experiencing time expansion, an individual perceives temporal boundaries as open, fluid, and unrestrictive. The individual experiences a psychological sense of spaciousness, characterized by the belief that time is plentiful and that tasks can be executed in an unhurried, deliberate manner. This dimension does not merely denote inactivity or leisure; rather, it reflects a state of cognitive tranquility regarding temporal demands. For example, an individual preparing for an intricate presentation who feels high time expansion perceives that there is ample room to research, revise, and reflect without panic, viewing deadlines not as an impending wall but as distant guideposts.

2. Time Constriction, Urgency, and Insufficiency

At the negative pole is the subjective experience of time constriction, often referred to as “time famine” or temporal scarcity. This dimension reflects an acute, visceral sensation that time is actively evaporating, compressing, or slipping away beyond the individual's control. It is characterized by three interrelated affective-cognitive components:

• Constriction: The perception that the current temporal window is narrowing rapidly, creating a claustrophobic psychological environment.
• Urgency: An internal, compulsive pressure to accelerate cognitive processing and motor execution, often accompanied by heightened autonomic arousal.
• Insufficiency: The persistent, distressing cognitive conviction that available hours are fundamentally inadequate to fulfill competing obligations, irrespective of whether the physical hours are theoretically sufficient.

Crucially, Etkin and colleagues demonstrated that subjective time availability is decoupled from actual clock time. Two individuals possessing the exact same numerical quantity of free time (e.g., three unscheduled afternoon hours) may exhibit radically divergent scores on the TAVL depending on their internal psychological state. If an individual harbors conflicting goals within that period—such as feeling compelled to both finalize an academic manuscript and assist a colleague—the resulting motivational tension constricts their perceived temporal horizon, driving low TAVL scores. Conversely, aligning goals or perceiving mutual compatibility between tasks broadens temporal perception, leading to elevated TAVL scores.

Theoretical Framework

The development of the Time Availability Scale is anchored in several prominent theoretical traditions across cognitive psychology, motivation science, and behavioral economics:

1. Goal Conflict Theory and Lewinian Field Theory

The central theoretical engine driving the TAVL's formulation is Goal Conflict Theory, which traces its lineage to Kurt Lewin's topological field theory. Lewin posited that psychological tension arises when opposing forces act simultaneously upon an individual. Building on this framework, Etkin, Evangelidis, and Aaker (2015) posited that when an individual pursues two or more goals perceived as mutually incompatible—whether due to conflicting values, competing physical demands, or mutual interference—internal psychological conflict ensues.

This conflict generates acute stress and cognitive dissonance. Because individuals typically perceive time as the ultimate finite resource required to attain goals, internal goal conflict automatically activates thoughts of temporal resource depletion. Consequently, goal conflict acts as an internal cognitive wedge that directly diminishes felt time availability, creating a subjective sensation of time pressure even in the absence of any real-world external deadline changes.

2. The Scarcity Mindset Framework

The TAVL operates in strong alignment with the behavioral economic framework of scarcity advanced by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (2013). Scarcity theory posits that the perception of resource insufficiency—whether financial, caloric, or temporal—fundamentally captures the mind's involuntary attention. When temporal scarcity is activated, cognitive bandwidth is consumed, forcing the individual into “tunneling,” where immediate deadlines are prioritized at the expense of long-term planning.

The TAVL operationalizes the cognitive and affective manifestation of this scarcity mindset within the temporal domain. By quantifying the degree to which an individual feels time-impoverished, the scale measures the acute attentional capture caused by temporal scarcity before it manifests in overt behavioral compromises.

3. Resource Allocation and Attentional Models of Time Perception

Cognitive models of temporal judgment, such as the Attentional Gate Model (Zakay & Block, 1997), suggest that subjective duration and time pressure depend on how cognitive resources are partitioned between internal prospective timing mechanisms and external task demands. When an individual experiences emotional arousal or anxiety, prospective time counters run faster, leading to the subjective impression that time is accelerating and slipping away rapidly. The TAVL directly taps into the phenomenological output of these disrupted attentional gates.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the TAVL has been extensively evaluated across experimental laboratory paradigms, longitudinal surveys, and field studies:

1. Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been established by correlating TAVL scores with validated measures of related psychological states. In the validation studies conducted by Etkin et al. (2015), subjective time availability showed robust, statistically significant negative correlations with:

• Perceived Stress: Assessed via Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), yielding correlation coefficients ranging from r = -.48 to r = -.59 (p < .001).
• State Anxiety: Assessed via the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S), showing strong inverse correlations (r = -.42 to r = -.53, p < .001).
• Somatic Arousal: Assessed via physiological indicators and subjective somatic tension scales (r = -.36, p < .01).

Conversely, the TAVL correlates positively with validated measures of subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and state positive affect (e.g., PANAS positive subscale: r = .34 to .45, p < .001), corroborating the theoretical premise that felt temporal abundance is intimately linked to psychological flourishing.

2. Discriminant Validity

Crucially, the TAVL demonstrates pronounced discriminant validity from objective time availability. In experimental studies where participants were assigned identical task durations (e.g., a 15-minute problem-solving block), manipulating goal conflict resulted in marked divergence in TAVL scores (F(1, 142) = 14.28, p < .001, η_p² = .09), despite objective clock time being perfectly held constant across experimental conditions.

Furthermore, discriminant validity analyses using the average variance extracted (AVE) versus shared variance criteria (Fornell-Larcker criterion) demonstrated that the TAVL is empirically distinct from:

• Trait Neuroticism: The latent correlation between TAVL and trait neuroticism remains moderate (r ≈ -.31), indicating that state time constriction is not merely a manifestation of general negative emotionality.
• Trait Time Urgency: The correlation with chronic time urgency scales (e.g., Landy et al.) averages r = -.38, confirming that the TAVL captures transient, situational fluctuations rather than invariant behavioral style.
• Objective Task Quantity: Regressing TAVL on actual scheduled task counts reveals that subjective time availability accounts for unique variance in psychological distress over and above the raw number of calendar commitments (ΔR² = .24, p < .001).

3. Predictive and Nomological Validity

The TAVL displays exceptional predictive validity across consumer and social domains. Research demonstrates that lower scores on the TAVL (indicating perceived time scarcity) reliably predict:

• Increased willingness to pay for convenience goods and expedited delivery services.
• Reduced willingness to volunteer chronological time for charitable causes, paired with a compensatory willingness to donate financial currency.
• Shifts in physical activity, dietary choices, and self-regulatory persistence under cognitive fatigue.

In mediation analyses across multiple studies, the TAVL successfully mediated the indirect effect of goal conflict manipulations on feelings of personal stress and subsequent decision outcomes, demonstrating strong nomological validity.

Reliability

The Time Availability Scale has demonstrated consistently high internal consistency across multiple empirical investigations involving both student and non-student adult samples:

1. Internal Consistency (Cronbach's Alpha and McDonald's Omega)

In the foundational validation studies published by Etkin, Evangelidis, and Aaker (2015), the five-item composite demonstrated high internal reliability across sequential experimental phases:

• Study 1 (Evaluating perceived time under goal conflict; N = 175): Cronbach's α = .86.
• Study 2 (Investigating physiological arousal and temporal perception; N = 144): Cronbach's α = .88.
• Study 3 (Field and lab replication examining consumer trade-offs; N = 210): Cronbach's α = .91.
• Independent Consumer Cohorts (Cross-sectional evaluations across online panels): Cronbach's α values consistently range from .84 to .89.

Contemporary psychometric evaluations utilizing McDonald's categorical omega (ω_h) similarly indicate high structural reliability (ω = .87 to .92), confirming that the internal consistency of the instrument is not an artifact of alpha inflation due to error covariance.

2. Test-Retest Stability Considerations

Because the TAVL is explicitly designed as a state measure intended to register immediate, context-dependent fluctuations in temporal perception, traditional long-term test-retest reliability (e.g., over a two-week interval) is theoretically inappropriate. The construct is designed to shift dynamically in response to cognitive demands, affective states, and ambient deadlines.

However, when evaluated under strict, invariant laboratory control conditions across brief intervals (e.g., 30 minutes in the absence of cognitive or motivational interventions), the short-term stability coefficient is high (r_tt = .79 to .83), indicating that the instrument is free from random measurement noise while remaining sensitive to true state changes.

Factor Analysis

The internal structural validity of the TAVL has been verified using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA):

1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In initial scale development, the five candidate items were subjected to principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extraction with oblique (promax) rotation. Key findings include:

• Scree Plot & Eigenvalue Criteria: Analysis revealed a clear single-factor solution based on the Kaiser-Guttman criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0). The primary factor yielded an initial eigenvalue of 3.28, accounting for approximately 65.6% to 71.2% of the total variance across validation datasets. A secondary factor registered an eigenvalue substantially below 0.65, confirming unidimensional dominance.
• Factor Loadings: Standardized factor loadings across the five items are uniformly high, typically ranging between .72 and .88, well above the conventional threshold of .40. Item communalities (h²) range from .52 to .77.

2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic models testing the hypothesized single-factor structure against alternative models have yielded exceptional goodness-of-fit indices across diverse samples. A single latent factor of “Subjective Time Availability” with the three reverse-scored items specified appropriately demonstrates strong fit:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .982 to .994 (recommended > .95)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .971 to .988 (recommended > .95)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .038 to .052 (90% CI [.012, .078]; recommended < .06)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .021 to .034 (recommended < .05)
• Model Chi-Square: χ²(5) = 7.42, p = .19 (indicating non-significant deviation between the empirical and model-implied covariance matrices).

Methodologists have also evaluated whether the presence of two positively worded items and three reverse-worded items introduces a method effect (a trivial wording artifact factor). While a bifactor model specifying a general time availability trait alongside an orthogonal method factor for negatively keyed items slightly improves statistical fit (Δχ²(2) = 4.12, p = .13), the general factor accounts for over 88% of the common variance (Explained Common Variance; ECV > .85). Consequently, the scale is appropriately interpreted and scored as a unidimensional instrument.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Time Availability Scale (TAVL)
• Alternative Names: State Perceived Time Availability Scale, Subjective Time Availability Measure
• Measurement Type: Self-report psychological state inventory
• Number of Items: 5 items
• Factor Structure: Unidimensional construct capturing perceived temporal capacity, measured via:
• 2 directly keyed items reflecting time expansion, boundlessness, and abundance.
• 3 reverse-keyed items reflecting time constriction, urgency, and insufficiency.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale with labeled endpoints:
• 1 = Strongly Disagree
• 2 = Disagree
• 3 = Somewhat Disagree
• 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
• 5 = Somewhat Agree
• 6 = Agree
• 7 = Strongly Agree
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents (ages 16+) in laboratory, clinical, and organizational environments.
• Administration Time: Approximately 60 to 90 seconds.
• Scoring Protocol:
• Step 1: Reverse-score the 3 time constriction/scarcity items using the formula: Recoded Value = 8 – Original Value.
• Step 2: Calculate the arithmetic mean across all 5 items (or compute a summed score ranging from 5 to 35).
• Step 3: Higher composite scores correspond to a greater subjective feeling of time availability and temporal abundance, whereas lower composite scores indicate acute feelings of temporal constriction, scarcity, and being pressed for time.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Initial Publication: 2015
• Original Copyright: American Marketing Association (AMA) and the authors (Jordan Etkin, Ioannis Evangelidis, and Jennifer Aaker).
• Commercial Status / Licensing Fees: The scale was published in the Journal of Marketing Research for academic and scientific inquiry. It is available without licensing fees for non-commercial, scholarly, educational, and scientific research purposes, provided that formal academic citation and attribution are given to the original 2015 publication.
• Commercial / Corporate Use: Commercial organizations seeking to embed the instrument into proprietary diagnostic software, commercial assessment batteries, or monetized employee testing platforms should consult the copyright policies of the American Marketing Association or contact the corresponding author for permission.

References

• Etkin, J., Evangelidis, I., & Aaker, J. (2015). Pressed for time? Goal conflict shapes how time is perceived, spent, and valued. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(3), 394–406. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0130
• Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality: Selected papers. McGraw-Hill.
• Mogilner, C. (2010). The pursuit of happiness: Time, money, or social connection? Psychological Science, 21(9), 1348–1354. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610380696
• Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Times Books, Henry Holt and Company.
• Perlow, L. A. (1999). The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(1), 57–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667031
• Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people's perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1130–1136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612447352
• Zakay, D., & Block, R. A. (1997). Temporal cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6(1), 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep11512604

Items of the Scale