Attitude Toward the Movie (Post-Viewing) (ATMOV-P)

Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Movie (Post-Viewing) (ATMOV-P) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to quantify an audience member’s overall retrospective evaluation and affective-cognitive appraisal of a feature film immediately following exposure. Developed by Nathalie Dens, Patrick De Pelsmacker, Marieke Wouters, and Nathalia Purnawirawan (2012) within the context of media psychology and marketing communication research, the instrument assesses post-exposure audience orientation toward cinematic stimuli. The ATMOV-P consists of seven items measured on a seven-point Likert-type scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The instrument operationalizes audience response across key experiential facets: general affective enjoyment, absence of consumer regret, retrospective validation of viewing choice, behavioral intention to re-watch, story and narrative appreciation, perception of acting quality, and global aesthetic quality.

Methodologically introduced during an extensive field experiment examining female cinemagoers in Belgium across distinct feature films, the ATMOV-P demonstrates exceptional cross-stimulus stability and internal consistency, yielding high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across diverse movie titles. The scale operates primarily as a unidimensional composite index or a tightly integrated two-tier evaluative structure (hedonic-affective appraisal and technical-narrative quality). By serving as an empirical baseline to control for movie-specific sentiment, the scale isolates vehicle-induced halo effects when evaluating embedded commercial messages, brand placements, narrative transportation, and media entertainment dynamics. The instrument fills an important methodological niche in communication studies, consumer behavior, and media psychology by offering a standardized, rapid-administration metric for retrospective media appraisal.

Keywords

Attitude Toward the Movie, ATMOV-P, media psychology, brand placement, cinematic evaluation, hedonic consumption, film appraisal, narrative transportation, audience reception, post-viewing evaluation, consumer behavior

Authors

The ATMOV-P instrument was developed and validated by a team of researchers in marketing communication and consumer behavior at the University of Antwerp, Belgium:

• Nathalie Dens — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on advertising effectiveness, digital marketing, brand placement, and media context effects.
• Patrick De Pelsmacker — Emeritus Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. A leading European scholar in marketing communications, advertising psychology, and consumer ethics.
• Marieke Wouters — Researcher in Marketing Communications, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
• Nathalia Purnawirawan — Associate Professor / Researcher in Marketing and Digital Media, associated with the University of Antwerp and partner European research institutions, specializing in online consumer reviews, advertising processing, and media metrics.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Movie (Post-Viewing) scale is to provide an empirically robust, psychometrically sound, and brief instrument to capture viewers’ retrospective attitudes toward a specific motion picture. In both experimental and field-based media research, the contextual vehicle—in this case, a full-length film—exerts profound cognitive and affective influences over how embedded content (such as embedded brands, product placements, social messaging, or public health campaigns) is received and processed.

Prior to the introduction of standardized post-viewing metrics like the ATMOV-P, researchers often employed fragmented, single-item questions or ad-hoc semantic differential scales adapted casually from the general advertising literature (e.g., standard Attitude toward the Ad, or $A_{ad}$, measures). These ad-hoc measures frequently failed to capture the unique multidimensional nature of film consumption, which merges narrative transportation, emotional catharsis, aesthetic appreciation of performances, and post-purchase consumption evaluation. The ATMOV-P resolves this methodological gap by explicitly addressing both the emotional resonance of the viewing experience (such as gratification and freedom from regret) and the cognitive appreciation of narrative craftsmanship (such as acting execution and storytelling quality).

In applied and academic research contexts, the scale fulfills three critical operational needs:

• Controlling for Media Context Artifacts: In brand placement and media sponsorship experiments, a viewer’s pre-existing or emergent liking of the movie can produce a powerful halo effect, confounding brand-level attitudes. The ATMOV-P functions as an essential covariate or baseline predictor, enabling researchers to isolate the true treatment effects of placement prominence, modality, and plot integration.
• Hedonic Product Evaluation: Within consumer psychology, feature films represent prototypical experiential, hedonic goods. The ATMOV-P provides a structured metric to test hypotheses concerning narrative immersion, expectation disconfirmation, and affective forecasting errors.
• Comparative Cinematic Analytics: The scale enables media analysts and marketing researchers to benchmark audience satisfaction across different theatrical titles, streaming releases, or demographic cohorts using a uniform psychometric architecture.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the ATMOV-P is Attitude Toward the Movie, conceptualized as an individual’s enduring, valenced cognitive and affective evaluation of a specific cinematic experience formulated immediately following its conclusion. Grounded in tripartite models of attitude theory, the construct integrates affective sentiments, cognitive assessments of artistic and functional attributes, and conative (behavioral) orientations toward the cultural artifact.

1. Affective-Hedonic Gratification

The affective core of the construct centers on intrinsic enjoyment and experiential pleasure derived during media consumption. Cinematic experiences are predominantly sought for emotional gratification, whether through amusement, excitement, suspense, or cathartic sadness. Within the ATMOV-P, this facet evaluates the raw emotional resonance of the screening—specifically whether the viewer experienced genuine pleasure while watching and harbors positive retrospective feelings about the investment of their time.

2. Cognitive Evaluation of Artistic Craftsmanship

Distinct from pure visceral enjoyment, cinemagoers engage in critical cognitive appraisal regarding the structural components of the film. The ATMOV-P captures this evaluative dimension by focusing on story appreciation (narrative coherence, thematic depth, pacing, engagement) and the perceived quality of the acting performances. This dimension recognizes that an audience member can cognitively respect the technical and artistic execution of a film even when the affective tone is dark, challenging, or non-traditionally entertaining.

3. Post-Consumption Dissonance and Retrospective Validation

Consuming a two-hour film involves substantial non-monetary investments of time and cognitive energy. Consequently, post-viewing sentiment is heavily modulated by the presence or absence of post-decisional dissonance. The ATMOV-P operationalizes this psychological mechanism through items examining the absence of regret and retrospective gladness: the conscious judgment that attending the film was an optimal allocation of personal resources rather than a wasted endeavor.

4. Conative and Behavioral Tendencies

Finally, the construct encompasses forward-looking behavioral intentions driven by current attitude valence. While actual commercial outcomes (such as box office return or home video purchase) occur downstream, willingness to re-watch the movie serves as an immediate psychometric proxy for high commitment and robust positive attitude strength.

Theoretical Framework

The ATMOV-P is anchored in several prominent theoretical frameworks spanning consumer behavior, communication science, and cognitive psychology:

Hedonic Consumption and Experiential Theory

Formulated by Holbrook and Hirschman (1982), the experiential view of consumer behavior posits that the consumption of aesthetic and cultural products cannot be adequately explained by utilitarian models of information processing. Films are hedonic goods characterized by symbolic meanings, multi-sensory stimulation, and emotional arousal. The theoretical architecture of the ATMOV-P reflects this paradigm by emphasizing subjective feelings, entertainment gratification, and aesthetic appreciation as primary evaluative parameters rather than functional utility.

The Affect Transfer and Context Effect Paradigm

Within advertising and media research, the Dual Mediation Hypothesis and classical conditioning models suggest that positive or negative feelings elicited by an editorial medium transfer systematically to embedded commercial stimuli (MacKenzie, Lutz, & Belch, 1986). In brand placement research, Dens et al. (2012) drew upon context effect theories to demonstrate that an audience’s global evaluation of a cinematic narrative creates an evaluative context. A highly favorable attitude toward the movie fosters positive cognitive elaboration and affective transfer toward embedded brands, provided the placement does not violate narrative congruity.

Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)

Emerging from communication studies (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974), Uses and Gratifications Theory assumes that audience members actively select media content to fulfill specific cognitive, emotional, and social needs. Post-exposure satisfaction is determined by whether the media experience gratified those anticipated needs. The ATMOV-P operationalizes the realization of these gratifications by measuring retrospective pleasure, narrative satisfaction, and the absence of post-exposure regret.

Narrative Transportation Theory

Developed by Green and Brock (2000), narrative transportation theory posits that when individuals lose themselves in a narrative world, their mental systems converge upon the events portrayed. High narrative transportation typically leads to strong positive evaluations of the story and characters, reduced critical counter-arguing, and heightened emotional connection. The ATMOV-P directly reflects the outcomes of narrative transportation through its combined assessment of plot appreciation, character/actor engagement, and overall viewing absorption.

Validity

Empirical validation of the ATMOV-P was established across rigorous field experimental conditions by Dens, De Pelsmacker, Wouters, and Purnawirawan (2012). The authors deployed the scale among female cinemagoers attending special public screenings of two distinct major motion pictures in commercial cinema theaters, establishing robust construct, convergent, and discriminant validity.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was confirmed via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The seven items exhibited substantial shared variance and mapped cleanly onto a coherent evaluative construct. Factor loadings across all items routinely exceeded the conventional psychometric threshold of .60, with the majority falling between .72 and .88. This indicates that the selected indicators share deep common variance representing holistic movie attitude.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly demonstrated through significant positive correlations between ATMOV-P scores and related constructs:

• Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Intentions: Positive movie attitudes measured by the scale strongly correlate with viewers’ expressed intentions to recommend the film to peers, friends, and social networks ($r > .65, p < .001$).
• Affective Arousal and Valence: Post-viewing scores align predictably with continuous self-report measures of emotional valence and immersion captured during screenings.
• Commercial Brand Evaluation: In Dens et al. (2012), favorable movie attitudes showed significant positive relationships with general brand attitude ($A_b$) for non-prominent and highly plot-connected placements, confirming theoretical expectations of affective spillover.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by distinguishing the ATMOV-P from proximal but conceptually distinct psychological variables:

• Brand Recall and Recognition: In the Dens et al. (2012) study, movie attitude operated independently of explicit placement memory. Viewers who held deeply favorable attitudes toward the film did not automatically demonstrate higher brand placement recognition ($p > .05$), proving that movie evaluation does not confound cognitive memory retention.
• Attitude Toward Product Placement (General): General predispositions toward the acceptability of commercial placements in media maintain distinct statistical profiles from the localized, post-hoc evaluation of a specific feature film captured by the ATMOV-P.

Reliability

The ATMOV-P exhibits exceptional internal consistency across different media stimuli, sample groups, and experimental configurations.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational investigation conducted by Dens et al. (2012), the scale was administered across two distinct cinematic releases to ensure generalizability beyond a single artistic genre or narrative style:

• Movie Context 1: The scale achieved a Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) well above .85, demonstrating outstanding internal cohesion among the seven items.
• Movie Context 2: When administered following an entirely separate motion picture, the scale produced a similarly high Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha > .88$).

These values comfortably exceed the standard .70 benchmark established by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) for psychological measurement instruments, indicating minimal measurement error variance. Corrected item-to-total correlations across both screening contexts remained robustly above .50 for all seven items.

Cross-Film Stability and Parallel Reliability

Because the ATMOV-P utilizes a template item format—where the target title is inserted dynamically into standardized sentence frames—its psychometric stability across differing genres (e.g., romantic comedies, psychological thrillers, high-action narratives) is critical. The parity in internal consistency observed across divergent film stimuli confirms that the scale’s structural reliability is vehicle-independent and stable across diverse cinematic contexts.

Factor Analysis

Psychometric examinations of the ATMOV-P support a predominantly unidimensional structure, though a correlated two-factor model provides nuanced diagnostic insights in aesthetic and media research.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When subjected to exploratory factor analysis (Principal Axis Factoring or Principal Component Analysis with Varimax or Promax rotation), the seven items typically converge on a dominant single factor explaining over 60% of the total variance. The scree plot typically displays a sharp drop-off after the first eigenvalue (frequently exceeding 4.2), meeting Kaiser’s criterion ($lambda > 1.0$) for unidimensionality. All seven items demonstrate primary loadings ranging from .70 to .89 on this primary factor, with minimal residual variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic models testing the one-factor specification against empirical data have demonstrated acceptable-to-excellent goodness-of-fit parameters across media studies:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values routinely exceed .94 (frequently $ge .96$).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically reports values $ge .94$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates fall within acceptable bounds, typically ranging between .045 and .072 with narrow 90% confidence intervals.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values remain below .05, indicating low discrepancies between observed and implied correlation matrices.

Hierarchical / Two-Factor Alternative

In specialized aesthetic contexts, researchers occasionally distinguish between two closely correlated sub-dimensions ($r > .60$):

• Factor 1: Experiential & Affective Enjoyment (Items reflecting general enjoyment, absence of regret, retrospective gladness, and repeat viewing desire).
• Factor 2: Artistic & Narrative Craft (Items reflecting story appreciation, acting execution, and overall cinematic quality).

Nonetheless, due to high shared variance, calculating a single composite mean score remains the standard, empirically sanctioned practice.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The ATMOV-P is organized as a structured self-report survey instrument optimized for rapid post-exposure completion in physical or digital viewing environments.

• Test Type: Retrospective self-report rating scale; psychological media evaluation tool.
• Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, web-based digital survey, or mobile field questionnaire.
• Number of Items: 7 items.
• Item Phrasing Format: Sentence-completion statements featuring a blank space or variable placeholder (e.g., [Movie Title]) dynamically populated with the specific film under investigation.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale typically anchored from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree (with 4 representing a neutral midpoint).
• Evaluated Facets:
  • Item 1: Overall affective enjoyment of the viewing experience.
  • Item 2: Absence of regret regarding the decision to watch.
  • Item 3: Retrospective validation and gladness for having seen the film.
  • Item 4: Behavioral willingness to re-watch the movie in the future.
  • Item 5: Cognitive appreciation and liking of the narrative/storyline.
  • Item 6: Aesthetic appreciation of the acting performance and cast execution.
  • Item 7: Holistic appraisal of overall cinematic quality.
• Scoring Protocol: Individual item scores (1 through 7) are aggregated into an arithmetic mean index, yielding a total score between 1.00 and 7.00. Higher mean scores indicate a more favorable attitude toward the cinematic vehicle. If reverse-phrased variants of the regret item are utilized, they must be recoded prior to index computation.
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes, minimizing participant fatigue in post-exposure field settings.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The ATMOV-P was formally introduced in 2012 through academic publication in the Journal of Advertising:

• Publication Year: 2012.
• Original Reference: Dens, N., De Pelsmacker, P., Wouters, M., & Purnawirawan, N. (2012). Do you like what you recognize? The effects of brand placement prominence and movie plot connection on brand attitude as mediated by recognition. Journal of Advertising, 41(3), 35–53.
• Intellectual Property & Licensing: The intellectual and conceptual property resides with the original authors and the American Academy of Advertising (published by Taylor & Francis). Academic and educational use of the scale for non-commercial research purposes is widely permitted under fair use conventions, provided proper scholarly attribution is maintained. Commercial applications, large-scale media analytics, or redistributions within proprietary software platforms generally require formal clearance through the publisher’s rights and permissions portal (e.g., Copyright Clearance Center / RightsLink).
• Fee: Standard academic research deployment carries no licensing fee.

References

• Balasubramanian, S. K., Karrh, J. A., & Patwardhan, H. (2006). Audience response to product placements: An integrative framework and future research agenda. Journal of Advertising, 35(3), 115–141. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367350308
• Dens, N., De Pelsmacker, P., Wouters, M., & Purnawirawan, N. (2012). Do you like what you recognize? The effects of brand placement prominence and movie plot connection on brand attitude as mediated by recognition. Journal of Advertising, 41(3), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367410303
• Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
• Holbrook, M. B., & Hirschman, E. C. (1982). The experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(2), 132–140. https://doi.org/10.1086/208906
• Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Uses and gratifications research. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. https://doi.org/10.1086/268109
• MacKenzie, S. B., Lutz, R. J., & Belch, G. E. (1986). The role of attitude toward the ad as a mediator of advertising effectiveness: A test of competing explanations. Journal of Marketing Research, 23(2), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378602300205
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Russell, C. A. (2002). Investigating the effectiveness of product placements in television shows: The role of modality and plot connection congruence on brand memory and attitude. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(3), 306–318. https://doi.org/10.1086/344432

Items of the Scale