Charity Likeability

1. Abstract

The Charity Likeability scale is a psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s overall affective favorability, dispositional warmth, and general positive orientation toward a charitable nonprofit organization. Originally adapted by Arango, Singaraju, and Niininen (2023) from traditional brand-attitude frameworks, the scale condenses multidimensional evaluative judgments into an efficient, unidimensional four-item inventory. Developed to capture nuanced consumer attitudes in prosocial marketing contexts—particularly in empirical investigations contrasting human-generated versus artificial intelligence (AI)-generated philanthropic campaigns—the instrument evaluates the degree to which a donor or observer holds a favorable, pleasant, positive, and appealing perception of a nonprofit entity.

Methodologically, the Charity Likeability scale utilizes a seven-point semantic differential or Likert-type response format anchored by polar evaluative adjectives (e.g., Unfavorable/Favorable, Dislike/Like, Negative/Positive, Unappealing/Appealing). Psychometric evaluations across multiple experimental cohorts demonstrate exceptional internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding α = .90, alongside robust composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) values surpassing established convergent validity thresholds. Confirmatory factor analyses corroborate a parsimonious, single-factor latent structure characterized by uniform, high factor loadings (all λ > .80). The instrument exhibits substantial predictive validity, accounting for significant variance in downstream prosocial outcomes, including charitable donation intention, institutional trust, word-of-mouth advocacy, and donor retention. As non-governmental organizations increasingly leverage automated creative tools and algorithmic advertising, the Charity Likeability scale provides an indispensable, rigorously validated metric for behavioral scientists, marketing scholars, and nonprofit executives seeking to gauge immediate affective resonance and sustained reputational equity.

2. Keywords

Charity Likeability, brand attitude, nonprofit marketing, charitable giving, prosocial behavior, donor psychology, artificial intelligence in advertising, psychometrics, consumer attitudes, philanthropic evaluation

3. Authors

The adaptation and empirical application of the four-item Charity Likeability scale in digital nonprofit advertising was formalized by the research team of Luis Arango, Stephen Pragasam Singaraju, and Outi Niininen:

• Luis Arango — Department of Marketing and Tourism, School of Business and Law, CQUniversity Australia, Melbourne, Australia. Primary research interests include digital consumer psychology, emerging marketing technologies, and prosocial consumer decision-making.
• Stephen Pragasam Singaraju — Department of Business Technology and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia. Focuses on technological adoption in marketing, social commerce, and advertising effectiveness.
• Outi Niininen — School of Management and Marketing, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Renowned for scholarship on digital marketing communications, consumer relationship management, and technology-driven donor engagement.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Charity Likeability scale is to provide a precise, psychometrically sound, and operationally nimble diagnostic tool to evaluate how favorably a consumer or prospective donor regards a charitable institution. Within the modern nonprofit ecosystem, charitable organizations do not operate in an informational vacuum; rather, they compete intensely for limited discretionary income, public attention, and volunteer capital within a crowded media environment. Measuring the affective evaluation of a charity is paramount because philanthropic decisions are fundamentally mediated by emotional, moral, and reputational heuristics rather than purely utilitarian cost-benefit analyses.

In empirical research, this scale was explicitly deployed to resolve pressing theoretical questions regarding donor skepticism in an era of technological disruption. Specifically, Arango, Singaraju, and Niininen (2023) utilized the instrument to investigate how prospective donors respond to creative content generated by artificial intelligence versus traditional human-produced appeals. Because the use of automated algorithms in altruistic campaigns can evoke perceptions of insincerity, calculation, or emotional detachedness, measuring likeability serves as an essential canary in the coal mine for institutional legitimacy. The scale allows researchers to isolate whether disclosure of algorithmic origin damages the warmth and perceived authenticity of the underlying nonprofit entity itself, independent of the aesthetic quality of the advertisement.

Beyond experimental advertising research, the scale fulfills vital practical functions within nonprofit management, clinical donor psychology, and organizational consulting. Applied researchers utilize the instrument to conduct brand health tracking, evaluating how scandals, executive compensation debates, or shifts in advocacy focus alter public affection over time. For fundraising practitioners, the metric acts as a leading performance indicator: changes in likeability systematically precede changes in monetary donation behavior, volunteer recruitment rates, and legacy planned-giving commitments. By boiling down broad, amorphous institutional reputational constructs into a sharp, four-item evaluative continuum, the instrument offers high functional utility without inducing survey fatigue among research participants.

5. Psychological Construct

At its core, Charity Likeability captures an overall affective-evaluative orientation toward a nonprofit organization. Rather than measuring cognitive beliefs about operational efficacy (e.g., overhead expenditure ratios, logistical efficiency) or abstract moral alignment, likeability reflects the valenced emotional disposition—warmth, affinity, and positive regard—that an individual maintains toward the institutional brand.

Although mathematically modeled as a unidimensional latent variable, the construct synthesizes four deeply interconnected psychological dimensions:

• Global Evaluative Valence (Positive vs. Negative): This dimension draws upon foundational social psychological models of attitude formation (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen). It represents the aggregate cognitive-affective valence assigned to the charity. A respondent assessing a charity as highly positive integrates disparate baseline memories, media impressions, and perceived mission value into a rapid, holistic judgment of goodwill.
• Affective Resonance and Affinity (Like vs. Dislike): Moving beyond neutral cognitive approval, this component reflects visceral affinity and sympathy. In philanthropic contexts, liking is closely aligned with the social psychology of interpersonal warmth. When donors like a charity, they experience feelings of emotional connection, benevolence, and kindred spirit with the organization’s purpose and its public representatives.
• Institutional Favorability (Favorable vs. Unfavorable): Favorability captures the donor’s dispositional readiness to support or endorse the nonprofit. It reflects an operationalized openness, indicating that the respondent views the institution’s ongoing societal interventions with approval and is psychologically predisposed to favor this entity over competing charitable claimants.
• Aesthetic and Symbolic Appeal (Appealing vs. Unappealing): This facet addresses the attractiveness and cultural resonance of the charity’s branding, storytelling, and self-presentation. An appealing charity successfully frames its social impact in a manner that inspires, captivates, and harmonizes with the personal values and self-identity of the observer.

In contrast to multidimensional organizational credibility instruments that separately quantify expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism, Charity Likeability isolates the summary affective impression. It functions as the psychological bridge between sensory marketing stimuli (such as an emotionally charged billboard or an AI-generated digital video) and deliberate prosocial action.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Charity Likeability scale is rooted in several complementary theoretical frameworks across consumer psychology, social cognition, and behavioral economics:

Dual-Process Models and the Affect Heuristic

According to dual-process theories of cognition (such as Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2) and Paul Slovic’s affect heuristic, individuals frequently make complex evaluative judgments by consulting their immediate, automatic affective reactions. When asked whether a charity deserves support, lay individuals rarely calculate actuarial impact statistics or scrutinize annual audited financial statements. Instead, they access an affective pool consisting of positive or negative feelings associated with the charity’s mental representation. Charity Likeability directly measures this pool of conscious and pre-conscious affective valence, which serves as a rapid mental shortcut guiding subsequent behavior.

The Stereotype Content Model (SCM)

Developed by Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy, and Peter Glick, the Stereotype Content Model posits that social entities (both people and brands) are fundamentally judged along two universal perceptual axes: warmth (intentions: friendly, trustworthy, sincere) and competence (capability: skillful, efficient, intelligent). In marketing applications, nonprofits are predominantly categorized as high-warmth organizations. Charity Likeability functions as a psychometric operationalization of perceived institutional warmth. If a marketing intervention (such as replacing human narrative copy with an autonomous artificial intelligence system) threatens perceived warmth by making the organization look mechanized, likeability plummets, destabilizing the core psychosocial foundation of the nonprofit’s brand equity.

Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

Within Icek Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior, behavioral intentions are determined by subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and attitudes toward the behavior. An individual’s attitude toward the act of donating is heavily influenced by their overall attitude toward the target institution. Charity Likeability directly captures this institutional attitude component ($A_{\text{brand}}$), demonstrating that when consumers exhibit high organizational favorability, their perceived friction regarding monetary giving decreases, dramatically accelerating direct behavioral intentions.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Charity Likeability scale has been extensively documented in contemporary advertising and nonprofit research literature:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity evaluates whether scale items that theoretically should be related are, in fact, highly interrelated. In the structural equation modeling (SEM) and factor analytic procedures conducted by Arango et al. (2023), convergent validity was systematically verified. Standardized factor loadings across all four items routinely exceeded the conservative threshold of .70 (with empirical loadings ranging between .82 and .94). Furthermore, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) consistently surpassed the established benchmark of .50, frequently reaching values above .75. This indicates that the latent likeability construct accounts for the vast majority of the variance observed across its individual measurement indicators, demonstrating exceptional construct convergence.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity confirms that the measure is statistically distinct from theoretically adjacent, yet non-identical, constructs. In empirical validation studies, Charity Likeability was modeled alongside related latent variables, including Attitude toward the Ad ($A_{\text{ad}}$), Source Credibility, Perceived Organizational Deceptiveness, and Donation Intention. Applying the rigorous Fornell-Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE for Charity Likeability was demonstrated to be significantly greater than any bivariate correlation between Charity Likeability and other structural model constructs. Additionally, modern assessment using the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) achieved values well below the stringent .85 cutoff, proving conclusively that the scale measures a distinct psychological state rather than general advertising sentiment or generic compliance.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale possesses remarkable predictive utility. In structural equation models, Charity Likeability exhibits strong, statistically significant positive paths leading directly to Donation Intentions (β ranging from .45 to .68, $p < .001$) and positive Word-of-Mouth (β > .50, $p < .001$). Crucially, Arango et al. (2023) demonstrated that Charity Likeability operates as a vital mediating mechanism: when consumers process disclosures indicating that a charitable campaign was generated via artificial intelligence, the downstream negative or positive effects on willingness to donate are mediated through fluctuations in Charity Likeability. These findings affirm the instrument’s criterion-related and nomological validity.

8. Reliability

Reliability refers to the internal consistency, stability, and repeatability of a psychological instrument. Across psychometric investigations, the Charity Likeability scale displays world-class reliability metrics:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): In empirical studies examining diverse consumer panels across Australia, the United States, and other Western contexts, the scale yields Cronbach’s alpha values ranging between α = .92 and α = .96. These values dramatically exceed the classic .70 and .80 thresholds recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein for scientific and applied psychological research.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Recognizing that Cronbach’s alpha can underestimate or overestimate reliability under departures from tau-equivalence, researchers have routinely calculated Composite Reliability (McDonald’s ω or Raykov’s rho). Across experimental testing samples, the Composite Reliability of the four-item scale consistently hovers between .93 and .97, confirming that the measurement error associated with the latent variable is exceptionally low.
• Test-Retest and Cross-Sample Stability: When replicated across separate experimental sub-studies involving differing stimulus conditions (e.g., environmental disaster relief vs. international humanitarian development), the scale’s internal reliability parameters remain stable without meaningful variance ($&\Delta;&\alpha; < .02$), proving the scale’s resilience against contextual measurement noise.

9. Factor Analysis

The latent dimensionality of the Charity Likeability measure has been verified through rigorous Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA):

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial structural testing, principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extractions with oblimin and varimax rotations were conducted. Across iterations, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy routinely surpassed .88, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity reached high statistical significance ($p < .0001$). The analysis revealed a solitary, unambiguous factor based on the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalue > 1.0) and Catell’s scree plot examination. This single factor accounted for over 80% of the total variance, with no secondary factors manifesting eigenvalues greater than 0.40, confirming strict unidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm that the four observed indicators load cleanly onto a single first-order latent factor, CFA was executed using structural equation modeling software (e.g., AMOS, Lavaan in R, or Mplus). The measurement model consistently demonstrates superior goodness-of-fit indices across published datasets:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio: $\chi^2/df < 2.50$, indicating an acceptable fit relative to model parsimony.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values routinely exceed .98 (often achieving .99 to 1.00), well above the conventional .95 benchmark for excellent fit.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Consistently reported between .97 and .99.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values consistently measure below .06 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .000 to .078), reflecting minimal residual approximation error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed below .02, indicating that the observed covariances among the four items are virtually identical to the implied model covariances.

Individual standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) are uniformly elevated, typically distributed as follows: Item 1 ($lambda pprox .89$), Item 2 ($lambda pprox .93$), Item 3 ($lambda pprox .91$), and Item 4 ($lambda pprox .86$). All loadings achieve statistical significance at the $p < .001$ level.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Charity Likeability scale are summarized below:

• Test Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale; evaluative semantic differential / Likert-type questionnaire.
• Intended Population: Adult consumers, prospective donors, organizational stakeholders, and general public samples aged 18 and older.
• Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 60 seconds (rapid assessment).
• Item Count: 4 items.
• Response Format: Seven-point semantic differential scale (scored 1 to 7). Typically presented with a common lead-in prompt: “Overall, my impression of [Charity Name] is…” anchored by opposing pairs:
• 1 = Unfavorable to 7 = Favorable
• 1 = Dislike to 7 = Like
• 1 = Negative to 7 = Positive
• 1 = Unappealing to 7 = Appealing
• Scoring Rules:
• All four items are framed in a uniform positive direction (if presented as 1 = Negative pole, 7 = Positive pole). No reverse scoring is necessary under this standard layout. If anchors are reversed during survey administration to prevent response acquiescence, reverse coding must be executed ($X_{\text{new}} = 8 – X_{\text{original}}$).
• An overall Charity Likeability composite score is calculated either as an unweighted mean of the four responses ($Mean = \sum Items / 4$) or as a summated composite score ranging from 4 to 28.
• Higher scores directly denote a more favorable, positive, and likeable institutional attitude. In SEM applications, scores are modeled as a reflective latent variable driven by the four standardized indicators.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Charity Likeability scale was operationalized in its nonprofit advertising adaptation by Luis Arango, Stephen Pragasam Singaraju, and Outi Niininen in their 2023 publication in the Journal of Advertising. The scale represents an academic adaptation of established brand-attitude instruments historically utilized in commercial marketing literature (such as scales developed by Mitchell & Olson, 1981; MacKenzie, Lutz, & Belch, 1986).

Permissions and Licensing: The scale is widely considered an academic research measurement tool. It is accessible for non-commercial educational, scholarly, and empirical research purposes without royalty fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and bibliographic citation are given to Arango et al. (2023) and the foundational brand-attitude literature. Commercial practitioners, corporate consultants, or proprietary software platforms intending to integrate the tool for commercial monetization should review the terms of service of the Journal of Advertising (published by Taylor & Francis) and seek explicit permission from the authors or copyright holders.

12. References

The academic validation and theoretical underpinning of the Charity Likeability scale are supported by the following foundational literature:

• 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
• Arango, L., Singaraju, S. P., & Niininen, O. (2023). Consumer responses to AI-generated charitable giving ads. Journal of Advertising, 52(4), 486–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2023.2223847
• Cuddy, A. J., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 61–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)00002-0
• 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
• 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
• Mitchell, A. A., & Olson, J. C. (1981). Are product attribute beliefs the only mediator of advertising effects on brand attitude? Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 318–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800306
• Slovic, P., Finucane, M. L., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2007). The affect heuristic. European Journal of Operational Research, 177(3), 1333–1352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2005.04.006

13. Items of the Scale