Breach of Promise

1. Abstract

The Breach of Promise scale is a concise, unidimensional psychometric instrument designed to evaluate an individual's perception that an organization or service provider has failed to honor its explicit or implicit relational and transactional commitments. Originally adapted from foundational organizational behavior frameworks and specialized for service encounters by Caruelle, Lervik-Olsen, and Gustafsson (2023), the instrument operationalizes the psychological breach construct within customer-firm exchange paradigms, notably in the context of temporal delays and service expectations. Comprising three self-report items administered via a 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree), the scale quantifies cognitive appraisals of unfulfilled obligations.

Psychometric evaluations demonstrate that the Breach of Promise scale possesses robust reliability, with internal consistency coefficients consistently exceeding conventional thresholds (α > .90; composite reliability > .90). Confirmatory factor analyses reveal an unambiguous single-factor structure characterized by high, uniform standardized factor loadings (λ ≥ .85) and optimal variance extraction (average variance extracted > .75). The scale displays strong convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity, demonstrating significant theoretical associations with perceived wait duration, service recovery dissatisfaction, cognitive dissonance, emotional outrage, and attenuated customer loyalty. Because of its brevity, high conceptual clarity, and psychometric rigor, the measure serves as an exemplary assessment tool for experimental paradigms, cross-sectional consumer surveys, and applied customer experience audits where participant fatigue must be minimized without compromising measurement fidelity.

2. Keywords

Breach of Promise, psychological contract breach, service encounter, customer expectations, service failure, customer satisfaction, waiting time, transactional breach, relational contract, psychometrics

3. Authors

The adaptation and empirical application of the three-item Breach of Promise scale within service marketing and consumer waiting contexts was formulated by an international team of behavioral and service management scholars:

• Delphine Caruelle, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway. Dr. Caruelle's research focuses on consumer behavior, customer experience management, digital technologies, and psychological reactions to service delays and time perception.
• Line Lervik-Olsen, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway. Her scholarship investigates customer satisfaction, service innovation, customer experience metrics, and longitudinal consumer evaluations.
• Anders Gustafsson, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway, and International Research Fellow at the Service Research Center (CTF), Karlstad University, Sweden. Professor Gustafsson is a leading international authority on service management, customer relationship dynamics, and retail strategy.

The conceptual foundation of the instrument derives historically from organizational psychology literature, specifically the seminal formulations of Denise M. Rousseau, as well as the psychometric operationalizations of psychological contract breach introduced by Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Sandra L. Robinson.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Breach of Promise scale is to assess the subjective cognitive evaluation that an exchange partner has defaulted on its stated or implied assurances. While originating in organizational psychology to examine employer-employee relations, modern service encounters and commercial relationships operate under equivalent psychological contracts. When customers enter a service environment—such as waiting for a flight, dining at a restaurant, queuing in a retail store, or anticipating delivery of a digital service—they form distinct cognitive expectations regarding performance parameters, standard operating procedures, and temporal guarantees. The Breach of Promise scale systematically quantifies the extent to which these expectations are perceived as broken.

In applied research, the scale is utilized across a wide spectrum of experimental, transactional, and longitudinal designs. Within consumer psychology, it provides a precise diagnostic marker of service failure severity. Organizations frequently make explicit time pledges (e.g., "Your order will arrive within 30 minutes" or "Your table will be ready shortly") or cultivate implicit normative expectations regarding acceptable duration. When actual service delivery deviates negatively from these anchors, the discrepancy transcends a mere technical error; it morphs into a perceived violation of trust. The scale captures this psychological transition from a cognitive mismatch to an explicit breach of relational integrity.

In clinical, counseling, and organizational settings, modified adaptations of this construct measure trust erosion, perceived betrayal, and relational friction. Within organizational consultation, it can assess employee perceptions of management commitments, managerial accountability, and organizational integrity. In market research and customer experience auditing, the measure functions as a leading indicator of negative word-of-mouth, retaliatory consumer behaviors, brand avoidance, and customer defection. By isolating perceived promise failure from general negative affect or generalized dissatisfaction, the scale allows researchers and practitioners to pinpoint whether customer discontent stems from execution quality or an underlying breakdown in institutional credibility.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct captured by the Breach of Promise scale is grounded in the cognitive dimension of psychological contract breach. In social exchange relationships, a promise constitutes an explicit or implicit communicative act that generates an obligation on the part of the promisor and a corresponding right or legitimate expectation on the part of the promisee. A breach occurs when an individual observes that the other party has failed to maintain that obligation. In service environments, this perception is fundamentally cognitive, representing an appraisal of unfulfilled duties rather than the affective reaction that often follows.

Psychometrics distinguishes between two interrelated yet distinct constructs: breach and violation. As delineated in psychological contract literature, breach is the cognitive realization that an exchange partner has not fulfilled one or more promised obligations. In contrast, violation refers to the intense emotional experience—characterized by anger, resentment, betrayal, and indignation—that frequently emanates from the cognitive appraisal of breach. The three items of the Breach of Promise scale isolate this cognitive perception, ensuring that the construct is not confounded with subsequent affective states or emotional distress.

The construct operates across several operational facets in consumer and organizational exchanges:

• Cognitive Awareness of Failure: The clear, conscious judgment that a specific benchmark or assurance made by the service provider has been unmet. For example, if a clinic states an appointment will occur at a set time, the patient forms an explicit cognitive representation of this milestone. Failure to adhere results in the perception that the organization did not do what it said it would do.
• Attribution of Accountability: The breach construct carries an inherent attribution of agency and responsibility. It does not merely signify an adverse event or an external inconvenience (such as bad weather delaying a transit service); rather, it denotes that the provider possessed the obligation to perform and defaulted.
• Calculative vs. Relational Dimensions: A promise breach can involve calculative (transactional) elements, such as delivery deadlines, monetary guarantees, and contractual specifications, or relational elements, such as respectful treatment, attentive care, and ongoing support. The universal wording of the scale assesses the core common denominator across both transactional and relational domains.

By measuring this construct unidimensionally, the scale prevents fragmentation across idiosyncratic contract terms, providing a standardized psychometric metric capable of comparing breach appraisals across diverse service settings, industries, and experimental conditions.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Breach of Promise scale is primarily anchored in Psychological Contract Theory, pioneered by Rousseau (1989, 1995), and subsequently expanded into customer-firm relationships by service researchers. Psychological contracts refer to individuals' mental models and beliefs regarding the terms and mutual conditions of an exchange agreement between themselves and another party. While formal contracts are legally binding and objectively verifiable, psychological contracts are perceptual, residing in the subjective cognitive architecture of the individual. They emerge from explicit marketing statements, brand communications, structural norms, and prior personal interactions.

Complementing psychological contract theory is the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion developed by Lazarus (1991). According to this framework, emotional and behavioral reactions to an event are mediated by cognitive appraisals. In a service delivery setting, an individual initially evaluates an encounter relative to goal congruence and personal relevance (primary appraisal). If an unexpected delay or discrepancy occurs, secondary appraisal evaluates accountability, control, and coping potential. Perceived breach of promise represents an appraisal of goal incongruence accompanied by other-directed blame. When consumers evaluate an unmet wait expectation as a broken promise, their cognitive appraisal triggers downstream feelings of betrayal, leading to punitive consumer behaviors.

Furthermore, the instrument relies on Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) (Oliver, 1980). EDT posits that satisfaction is a function of the direction and magnitude of the discrepancy between prior expectations and actual performance. Negative disconfirmation occurs when performance falls below expectations. However, perceived breach of promise captures a qualitatively more severe construct than simple negative disconfirmation: it frames the expectation not merely as an anticipated performance baseline, but as an active moral and contractual commitment made by the service provider. Consequently, breach of promise represents an amplified disconfirmation embedded with ethical accountability.

Finally, Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964) and the Norm of Reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) explain the behavioral consequences of high breach scores. Social exchange relationships are sustained through fair, reciprocal balance. When one actor invests resources (time, money, psychological commitment) and the counterparty defaults on its reciprocal duty, the perceived inequity stimulates psychological distress, driving the injured party to restore balance through disengagement, confrontation, negative public communications, or complete relationship termination.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Breach of Promise scale has been thoroughly established through rigorous empirical testing across multiple service and experimental contexts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale's capacity to reflect the theoretical domain of psychological contract breach without empirical distortion. Convergent validity represents the degree to which scale items correlate strongly with one another and converge on the intended latent variable. In structural equation modeling (SEM) evaluations, the average variance extracted (AVE) for the Breach of Promise scale routinely exceeds .75, well above the standard psychometric threshold of .50 established by Fornell and Larcker (1981). The standardized factor loadings across all three items routinely surpass .85 (typically ranging between .88 and .95, with p < .001), confirming that the items share an extensive proportion of common variance and represent a coherent latent construct.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity requires that the scale measures a construct distinct from theoretically related, yet conceptually different, behavioral and psychological constructs. In empirical validation studies, the Breach of Promise construct has been contrasted with:

• Overall Customer Satisfaction: Demonstrating significant negative correlations (typically r = -.55 to -.70), yet distinct in that satisfaction reflects a cumulative evaluation, whereas breach represents a specific cognitive failure.
• Perceived Waiting Time / Objective Delay: While long waits increase the probability of perceived breach, the correlation is moderate (r = .35 to .50), demonstrating that not all delays are perceived as broken promises (e.g., when explanations are given) and that promises can be broken even during short encounters.
• Customer Anger and Emotional Outrage: Distinguishing cognitive breach appraisals from affective responses, with the square root of the AVE for breach exceeding the inter-construct correlations with emotional distress scales (confirming the Fornell-Larcker criterion and HTMT ratios below .85).

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity evaluates whether the scale functions as predicted within an established theoretical network. Caruelle et al. (2023) demonstrated that when waiting times were longer than expected, perceived breach of promise increased sharply, functioning as a primary mediator of degraded customer satisfaction. In experimental manipulations testing varying delay lengths and information framing, the scale successfully differentiated between conditions where expectations were violated versus met. Furthermore, elevated scores on the Breach of Promise scale systematically predict downstream relational damages, including decreased repurchase intentions, lowered Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and heightened propensity for negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).

8. Reliability

Reliability concerns the stability, consistency, and precision of a measurement tool across repeated administrations and within sample populations. The Breach of Promise scale exhibits exceptional psychometric reliability across diverse settings:

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency measures the degree to which all items within the instrument evaluate the same underlying entity. For this three-item measure, internal consistency is exceptionally high:

• Cronbach's Alpha (α): Across published consumer and retail studies, Cronbach's alpha for the scale systematically ranges from .91 to .96. These values significantly surpass the established .70 to .80 benchmark for exploratory and applied research, indicating high inter-item covariance and minimal random measurement error.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling assessments typically report CR values between .92 and .96. Because composite reliability does not assume tau-equivalence (equal factor loadings across items), it provides an even more accurate estimation of scale reliability, confirming that the latent variable is robustly identified.
• Omega Reliability (ω): McDonald's hierarchical and total omega coefficients similarly exceed .92, reinforcing the scale's reliability when calculated using modern estimation methodologies.

Item Statistics and Inter-Item Correlations

Examination of the inter-item correlation matrix indicates strong, uniform correlations among all three pairs of items, typically falling between .78 and .88. The corrected item-total correlations uniformly exceed .80, indicating that removing any of the three items would not yield an increase in the overall reliability coefficient, thereby confirming that all three indicators contribute meaningfully to the composite score.

9. Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have been employed in psychometric literature to evaluate the latent structure of the Breach of Promise scale.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When subjected to principal component analysis or maximum likelihood factor extraction without pre-specified constraints, the three items consistently generate a clean, unambiguous single-factor solution. The eigenvalue for the primary factor uniformly exceeds 2.4 (accounting for 80% to 88% of the total variance across items), while secondary eigenvalues remain well below the 0.50 Kaiser-Guttman threshold. The scree test displays a sharp, undeniable elbow after the first factor, confirming the strict unidimensionality of the measure.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analyses across representative consumer datasets confirm that the unidimensional model demonstrates superior fit to the observed data. Standardized factor loadings (λ) for the items are exceptionally high and balanced:

• Item 1 ("The service provider broke its promise to me"): λ = .88 – .94
• Item 2 ("The service provider failed to fulfill its promise"): λ = .91 – .96
• Item 3 ("The service provider did not do what it said it would do"): λ = .87 – .93

Because a three-indicator single-factor model has zero degrees of freedom (just-identified or saturated model), fit indices are typically evaluated within larger measurement models incorporating related constructs (e.g., expectations, satisfaction, negative emotions). In such comprehensive structural models, the inclusion of the Breach of Promise construct produces excellent fit statistics:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): > .97
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): > .96
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): < .05 (90% CI: .000 – .065)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): < .03

These findings substantiate that the three items act as parallel, highly congruent reflections of the underlying breach construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Breach of Promise scale are structured as follows:

• Instrument Name: Breach of Promise Scale
• Construct Assessed: Perceived failure of an organization or service provider to fulfill explicit or implicit commitments during an exchange relationship
• Instrument Type: Self-administered psychometric questionnaire / survey rating scale
• Target Population: Consumers, service recipients, organizational clients, and study participants engaged in commercial or interpersonal exchange interactions
• Item Count: 3 items
• Dimensionality: Unidimensional (single latent factor)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree)
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat disagree
  • 4 = Neither agree nor disagree
  • 5 = Somewhat agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All items are framed in a direct positive direction toward the construct (breach), meaning there are no reverse-coded items.
  • An overall score is calculated as the arithmetic mean across the three items (ranging from 1.0 to 7.0) or as a summed composite score (ranging from 3 to 21).
  • Interpretation: Higher scores reflect a greater perceived breach of promise by the service provider; lower scores denote that the provider is perceived as having honored its obligations.
• Administration Time: Less than 1 minute (approximately 20 to 30 seconds), making it exceptionally well-suited for high-density survey batteries and post-encounter exit surveys.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Breach of Promise scale items utilized by Caruelle, Lervik-Olsen, and Gustafsson were formally published in 2023 in the Journal of Retailing. The underlying conceptualization of psychological contract breach traces to early organizational scholarship (Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Rousseau, 1990).

Licensing and Fee Structure: As published within peer-reviewed academic literature, the scale is generally accessible without monetary cost for non-commercial educational, scientific, and empirical research purposes, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and formal citation are accorded to the authors and original publication. Researchers conducting non-profit or academic investigations do not require explicit written permission to implement the three questionnaire items. However, commercial organizations seeking to embed the scale within proprietary enterprise feedback software, commercial customer experience platforms, or fee-generating diagnostic audits should verify copyright conditions with the publisher (Elsevier / New York University on behalf of the Journal of Retailing).

12. References

• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/318260655
• Caruelle, D., Lervik-Olsen, L., & Gustafsson, A. (2023). The clock is ticking — or is it? Customer satisfaction response to waiting shorter vs. longer than expected during a service encounter. Journal of Retailing, 99(2), 247–264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2023.02.002
• 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
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195069945.001.0001
• Morrison, E. W., & Robinson, S. L. (1997). When employees feel betrayed: A model of how psychological contract violation develops. Academy of Management Review, 22(1), 226–256. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1997.9707180265
• Oliver, R. L. (1980). A cognitive model of the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction decisions. Journal of Marketing Research, 17(4), 460–469. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378001700405
• Robinson, S. L., & Morrison, E. W. (2000). The development of psychological contract breach and violation: A longitudinal study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(5), 525–546. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01384942
• Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452231594

13. Items of the Scale