Attitude Toward Offshoring Scale (ATOFF)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward Offshoring Scale (ATOFF) is an established psychometric instrument designed to evaluate an individual's generalized cognitive and evaluative stance toward corporate offshoring—specifically, the strategic relocation of organizational business processes, production units, and operational functions from domestic home markets to foreign territories. Developed and validated by Silvia Grappi, Simona Romani, and Richard P. Bagozzi (2013), the instrument adapts broader attitudinal measurement traditions to the socio-economic and consumer behavior domains. Comprising five balanced, seven-point semantic differential items, the scale captures the degree to which an individual views offshore outsourcing along fundamental evaluative axes: harmful–beneficial, unnecessary–necessary, bad–good, unfavorable–favorable, and negative–positive.

Psychometrically, the ATOFF exhibits robust unidimensionality, high internal consistency reliability (typically yielding Cronbach's $\alpha$ coefficients and composite reliabilities exceeding .90), and exemplary convergent and discriminant validity against adjacent psychological constructs such as perceived risk of offshoring, corporate social responsibility perceptions, consumer ethnocentrism, and moral emotions (e.g., contempt, anger, and moral outrage). The scale functions as an essential measurement mechanism within consumer psychology, business ethics, and international management, permitting empirical examination of how corporate operational restructuring drives consumer appraisals, negative word-of-mouth, brand equity dilution, and consumer boycotts. Originally refined and validated in Italian consumer samples using rigorous forward- and back-translation procedures from foundational English scales, the ATOFF is a versatile, parsimonious, and methodologically sound metric for academic and applied research in global market dynamics.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward Offshoring Scale, ATOFF, semantic differential, offshore outsourcing, consumer psychology, corporate social responsibility, moral emotions, business ethics, scale validation, psychometrics, consumer boycotts, cognitive appraisal

3. Authors

The ATOFF scale was adapted and validated in consumer research by a team of prominent scholars in the fields of marketing, consumer psychology, and applied behavioral science:

• Silvia Grappi, Ph.D.: Professor of Marketing at the Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her scholarly research focuses extensively on consumer behavior, ethical decision-making, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR).
• Simona Romani, Ph.D.: Professor of Consumer Behavior at the Department of Business and Management, Luiss Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy. Her research interests center on emotional responses in consumer decision-making, moral emotions, consumer-brand relationships, and ethical consumption.
• Richard P. Bagozzi, Ph.D.: Dwight F. Benton Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Science in Management at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. A pioneering methodologist and theorist, Professor Bagozzi has contributed fundamentally to structural equation modeling, psychological measurement, the theory of reasoned action, cognitive appraisal theories, and the social psychology of consumer action.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward Offshoring Scale (ATOFF) is to operationalize and quantify the valenced cognitive and affective appraisals that individuals hold regarding corporate offshoring practices. As multinational corporations increasingly reallocate administrative services, software engineering, customer service, and manufacturing facilities across national borders to capitalize on wage differentials, specialized competencies, and operational efficiencies, such strategies frequently generate intense socio-political controversy and consumer friction in domestic markets. Domestic consumers and workers often interpret corporate relocation as an abdication of social responsibility, economic patriotism, and community loyalty.

The scale was developed to address critical theoretical and empirical voids in marketing, industrial-organizational psychology, and international trade scholarship. Prior to the formal adaptation and psychometric isolation of the ATOFF, investigations into consumer backlash against corporate restructuring often conflated generalized socio-political ideologies (e.g., generalized protectionism or consumer ethnocentrism) with the specific, focal attitude directed at the act of offshoring itself. The ATOFF isolate this domain-specific attitude, functioning as a clean evaluative barometer unencumbered by localized political affiliations or temporary macroeconomic shocks.

In research contexts, the scale is routinely deployed to model the downstream consequences of corporate internationalization strategies. It enables researchers to investigate whether negative attitudes toward offshoring serve as an antecedent, a mediating catalyst, or a boundary condition (moderator) governing the relationship between corporate announcements and consumer retaliation. Specifically, the ATOFF predicts moral indignation, perceptions of corporate greed, negative word-of-mouth (NWOM), protest intentions, and active boycotting behavior. In organizational and corporate communications settings, the scale offers managerial utility by allowing enterprises to gauge baseline consumer sentiment prior to publicizing strategic restructuring initiatives, thereby facilitating proactive corporate social responsibility framing, employee transition support programs, and targeted stakeholder engagement strategies.

5. Psychological Construct

At its theoretical foundation, the ATOFF measures an individual's overall attitude toward a target behavior and corporate policy: offshore outsourcing. In contemporary psychometrics and social psychology, an attitude is formally conceptualized as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Rather than viewing the construct as a transient mood state or a broad personality trait, the ATOFF captures a stable, cognitive-affective disposition toward a specific corporate maneuver.

The construct measured by the ATOFF is explicitly unidimensional, representing a global evaluative continuum. However, a granular inspection of its five semantic differential pairs reveals that it spans two interconnected, foundational facets of cognitive appraisal:

• Utilitarian-Functional Evaluation (Necessity and Utility):
  • Harmful – Beneficial: Evaluates the perceived net utility and societal consequences of offshoring. Respondents must weigh whether the practice induces societal detriment (e.g., domestic job losses, regional economic decay, wage suppression) versus societal advantage (e.g., lower consumer prices, global wealth distribution, corporate efficiency).
  • Unnecessary – Necessary: Captures the attribution of strategic imperative versus opportunistic exploitation. Individuals assessing offshoring as “necessary” acknowledge modern global competitive pressures and structural economic constraints, whereas those rating it as “unnecessary” perceive it as discretionary corporate greed or arbitrary cost-cutting.
• General Evaluative and Valence Judgments (Moral-Affective Tone):
  • Bad – Good: Operates as an overarching moral-evaluative anchor, tapping into instinctive ethical appraisals regarding corporate decency, justice, and community stewardship.
  • Unfavorable – Favorable: Reflects an overall orientation of personal approval, indicating whether the respondent endorses the strategic choice from an external stakeholder perspective.
  • Negative – Positive: Measures the baseline psychological valence evoked by the concept of corporate offshoring, integrating emotional sentiment with analytical assessment.

By capturing both pragmatic utility (beneficial, necessary) and core evaluative valence (good, favorable, positive), the scale yields a cohesive, high-order metric of consumer support versus condemnation. Low total scores reflect deep-seated antipathy, perceived injustice, and condemnation of corporate relocation, whereas high scores indicate alignment with market liberalism, globalized economic efficiency, and corporate autonomy.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Attitude Toward Offshoring Scale is theoretically embedded within multiple converging frameworks across cognitive psychology, microeconomics, and marketing science:

Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion

The primary theoretical foundation anchoring the development of the ATOFF by Grappi, Romani, and Bagozzi (2013) is Cognitive Appraisal Theory (Lazarus, 1991; Roseman, 1991; Bagozzi, 1992). Appraisal theory posits that emotions and behavioral intentions do not arise directly from objective environmental events, but rather from the subjective evaluation and interpretation (appraisal) of those events relative to personal values, well-being, and social norms.

Within this framework, corporate offshoring represents an external event. An individual evaluates this event along appraisal dimensions such as goal congruence, legitimacy, and agency. The ATOFF quantifies this cognitive appraisal: when consumers appraise offshoring as harmful, unnecessary, and bad (low ATOFF score), this appraisal triggers intense other-condemning moral emotions, notably anger, contempt, and moral outrage. These secondary emotional reactions subsequently propel behavioral responses aimed at punishing the transgressor, including boycotts and retaliatory communication.

Theory of Planned Behavior and the Tridimensional Model of Attitudes

The instrument is also rooted in the classic Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) and the tripartite model of attitudes (affect, cognition, and conation). According to TPB, specific attitudes toward a behavior directly inform behavioral intentions. While the consumer is not the entity engaging in the offshoring act, their attitude toward the corporate act dictates their reciprocal consumer behaviors. The ATOFF acts as the primary attitude variable ($A_{act}$ or $A_{target}$) within structural models that examine how corporate policies cascade through psychological processes to govern brand loyalty and purchase avoidance.

Social Identity Theory and Consumer Ethnocentrism

A complementary foundation is Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Offshoring fundamentally involves transferring resources, employment, and status from the in-group (domestic workers and local communities) to an out-group (foreign labor markets). Consequently, an individual's attitude toward offshoring is deeply entangled with in-group favoritism, out-group derogation, and consumer ethnocentrism (Shimp & Sharma, 1987). Those who strongly identify with their domestic national identity view offshoring as a direct threat to the in-group's economic viability, precipitating acutely negative evaluations across all five scale items.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the ATOFF has been rigorously substantiated using standard construct validation protocols, structural equation modeling (SEM), and confirmatory factor analytic frameworks:

Construct and Factorial Validity

During the primary empirical investigations conducted by Grappi et al. (2013), the five-item scale was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The items loaded strongly and uniformly on a single underlying latent dimension. Standardized factor loadings across diverse empirical samples regularly exceed .85, indicating that the items share substantial common variance and accurately converge on the target theoretical construct without dimensional fragmentation.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

To establish convergent validity, average variance extracted (AVE) was computed; in the seminal studies, AVE values substantially surpassed the conventional .50 benchmark (routinely demonstrating $AVE > .75$), demonstrating that the latent construct accounts for far more variance in the observed indicators than measurement error.

Discriminant validity was established via rigorous psychometric tests. In Study 2 of Grappi et al. (2013), the ATOFF was modeled alongside a concurrently administered Perceived Risk of Offshoring Scale and measures of Moral Emotions (anger, contempt, disgust). Applying the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE for the ATOFF was found to be significantly larger than any bivariate correlation between the ATOFF and adjacent constructs ($r$ values typically ranged between $-.35$ and $-.58$). Furthermore, constrained chi-square difference tests ($\Delta \chi^2$) comparing unconstrained models (where the correlation between latent constructs is freely estimated) against constrained models (where the correlation is fixed to unity, $phi = 1.0$) demonstrated statistically significant degradation in fit for the constrained models ($p < .001$), empirically confirming that the ATOFF is distinct from general corporate brand attitude, perceived operational risk, and affective moral outrage.

Nomological and Predictive Validity

The predictive validity of the scale is exceptionally well-documented. In structural equation models, ATOFF scores demonstrate robust, statistically significant paths to key downstream variables:

• Negative attitudes toward offshoring strongly predict increases in moral outrage and punitive consumer motivations ($eta$ coefficients frequently ranging from $-.40$ to $-.65$).
• The scale significantly predicts consumer willingness to engage in negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) and active corporate boycotts when exposed to relocation announcements.
• It exhibits predictive validity in moderating the effectiveness of corporate communication; individuals with highly negative ATOFF scores are resistant to corporate social responsibility (CSR) claims, interpreting them as disingenuous attempts at impression management (“greenwashing” or “social washing”).

8. Reliability

The ATOFF demonstrates exemplary internal consistency across diverse empirical inquiries, linguistic adaptations, and sample demographics:

• Internal Consistency Reliability: In the original validation studies by Grappi, Romani, and Bagozzi (2013), the scale exhibited a Cronbach's alpha ($lpha$) of .94 in consumer samples evaluating corporate production shifts. Subsequent replications and related investigations have consistently yielded alpha coefficients ranging between .91 and .96.
• Composite Reliability ($
  ho_c$): When evaluated within a structural equation modeling framework, the composite reliability of the latent construct routinely exceeds .93, surpassing the rigorous threshold of .80 recommended for basic research and .90 for applied decisional contexts.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations for each of the five items routinely fall between .78 and .91, indicating high item homogeneity and confirming that each item makes an indispensable, non-redundant contribution to the overall composite score.
• Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): Given the high reliability coefficients and substantial factor loadings, the standard error of measurement associated with composite scores is minimal, ensuring high precision across the entire latent continuum—from extreme anti-offshoring hostility to broad pro-offshoring endorsement.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive factor analytic procedures have affirmed the structural stability and unidimensionality of the ATOFF instrument:

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale refinement and exploratory pilot testing, principal axis factoring (PAF) and principal component analysis (PCA) with unrotated and oblique factor solutions revealed a single-factor structure based on the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues greater than 1.0). The primary eigenvalue regularly accounts for over 75% to 82% of the total variance across items, with no secondary factor exhibiting an eigenvalue above 0.50. The scree test visibly displays a classic single-factor cliff, confirming an unequivocal unidimensional construct.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analyses utilizing maximum likelihood estimation have been performed across multiple consumer cohorts. A single-factor measurement model exhibits superior global fit to the empirical data:

• Goodness-of-Fit Indices:
  • Comparative Fit Index (CFI) $ge .98$
  • Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) $ge .97$
  • Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) $le .05$ (with $90%$ confidence intervals comfortably spanning $.00$ to $.08$)
  • Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) $le .025$
  • Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2/df$) typically $< 2.50$, indicating exceptional fit
• Standardized Factor Loadings ($lambda$):
  • Harmful – Beneficial: $lambda pprox .84 – .89$
  • Unnecessary – Necessary: $lambda pprox .81 – .86$
  • Bad – Good: $lambda pprox .90 – .94$
  • Unfavorable – Favorable: $lambda pprox .91 – .95$
  • Negative – Positive: $lambda pprox .89 – .93$

All factor loadings are statistically significant at $p < .001$. Modification indices reveal no substantial localized strain or cross-loadings, demonstrating that error covariances between items do not require post-hoc estimation to achieve exemplary fit.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric scale; cognitive-evaluative attitude inventory.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), or mobile online survey.
• Number of Items: 5 items (bipolar adjective pairs).
• Target Population: General adult population, consumers, industrial stakeholders, and employees (recommended age: 18+).
• Response Scale: 7-point semantic differential scale (1 to 7).
  • Item 1: 1 = Harmful, 7 = Beneficial
  • Item 2: 1 = Unnecessary, 7 = Necessary
  • Item 3: 1 = Bad, 7 = Good
  • Item 4: 1 = Unfavorable, 7 = Favorable
  • Item 5: 1 = Negative, 7 = Positive
• Scoring Protocol:
  • All items are directly scored such that higher numerical values (towards 7) denote a more positive, favorable, and accepting attitude toward corporate offshoring.
  • Values toward 1 indicate an unfavorable, highly critical, and negative attitude.
  • Individual item scores are averaged (or summed) to yield a composite score ranging from 1.0 to 7.0 (or a total score from 5 to 35).
  • No reverse scoring is required if items are oriented as displayed in the standard instrument (negative anchors at 1, positive anchors at 7).
• Average Completion Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes, ensuring near-zero respondent fatigue.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2013 (adapted from antecedent attitude measurement literature).
• Copyright & Ownership: The primary article introducing this adaptation is copyrighted by the Academy of Marketing Science and published by Springer Science+Business Media.
• Academic Permissions: The scale items and psychometric properties are published openly in the peer-reviewed academic literature for scholarly research, educational, and scientific investigation purposes. Academic researchers may utilize the scale in non-commercial empirical research under standard academic fair-use conventions, provided that appropriate formal bibliographic citation is given to Grappi, Romani, and Bagozzi (2013).
• Commercial Applications: Commercial usage, proprietary consulting integrations, or inclusion within fee-based corporate market research platforms may require formal copyright clearance and licensing permissions from Springer Nature.
• Fee: Free for independent scientific research and non-profit educational administration.

12. References

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
• Bagozzi, R. P. (1992). The self-regulation of attitudes, intentions, and behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(2), 178–204. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786945
• Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The Psychology of Attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
• 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
• Grappi, S., Romani, S., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2013). The effects of company offshoring strategies on consumer responses. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(6), 683–704. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0336-3
• Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford University Press.
• Roseman, I. J. (1991). Appraisal determinants of discrete emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 5(3), 161–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939108411034
• Shimp, T. A., & Sharma, S. (1987). Consumer ethnocentrism: Construction and validation of the CETSCALE. Journal of Marketing Research, 24(3), 280–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378702400304
• 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.

13. Items of the Scale