Locavore Scale

1. Abstract

The Locavore Scale (LOC) is a psychometrically validated, multidimensional instrument designed to measure locavorism operationalized as a consumer ideology—a structured, normative belief system that guides attitudes, motivations, and behaviors regarding locally produced food. Developed by Brandon J. Reich, Joshua T. Beck, and John Price (2018), the scale addresses a critical theoretical gap in consumer psychology and sensory marketing by distinguishing ideological commitments to local food systems from simple geographic preferences, parochialism, or general environmental concern. The scale was established through an extensive six-study empirical program encompassing eight independent samples ($N > 3,500$) employing exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, lab-based experiments, and field methodologies.

The LOC captures locavorism across three interrelated yet distinct sub-dimensions: Lionization (the evaluative belief that local foods possess superior intrinsic qualities, such as superior taste, freshness, and nutritional value), Opposition (a systemic distrust and defensive moral aversion toward industrialized, long-distance global supply chains), and Communalization (the prosocial motivation to preserve communal sovereignty, economic resilience, and interpersonal solidarity through local commerce). The instrument employs a 7-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”). Across multiple iterations, the LOC demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s $\alpha$ coefficients typically exceeding .85 across subscales and .90 for the aggregate measure) and test-retest stability. Confirmatory factor analyses confirm that a second-order factor model—or a correlated three-factor structure—exhibits superior fit over unidimensional alternatives ($\chi^2/df < 2.5$, $\text{CFI} > .95$, $\text{TLI} > .95$, $\text{RMSEA} < .06$). The instrument exhibits robust convergent and discriminant validity against related constructs such as consumer ethnocentrism, hometown bias, political ideology, and anticorporatism, while maintaining superior predictive power for real consumer choice, willingness to pay, brand evangelism, and persuasive susceptibility to ethical marketing.

2. Keywords

Locavore Scale, locavorism, consumer ideology, local food, sustainable consumption, lionization, communalization, food choice psychology, moralized consumption, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Locavore Scale was conceptualized, developed, and validated by the following researchers in consumer behavior and behavioral marketing:

• Brandon J. Reich — Assistant Professor of Marketing, Portland State University (at the time of scale development, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oregon). Specialist in consumer ideology, moral decision-making, and sustainable consumer choices.
• Joshua T. Beck — Assistant Professor of Marketing, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon. Research focused on consumer brand relationships, political identity, and the psychological underpinnings of socio-economic behavior.
• John Price — Department of Marketing, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon. Academic contributor to consumer behavior research and quantitative marketing models.

4. Purpose

The rapid expansion of the local food movement over the past two decades has transformed agricultural commerce, retail distribution, and consumer discourse. However, early academic investigations into local food procurement often conflated behavioral choices with idiosyncratic motivations, treating the “locavore” phenomenon merely as an offshoot of organic consumption, generalized pro-environmental behavior, or demographic geographic bias. The central purpose of the Locavore Scale (LOC) is to operationalize locavorism as a comprehensive consumer ideology: a stable, coherent matrix of cognitive schemas, affective stances, and moral obligations that structure how individuals view the production, distribution, and consumption of sustenance.

Traditional economic and sensory models fail to explain why consumers frequently exhibit substantial price premiums, incur heightened search costs, and display vocal brand evangelism for regional food products whose physical and objective sensory profiles may not empirically surpass mass-manufactured alternatives. Reich, Beck, and Price (2018) recognized that locavorism serves as an ideological lens that assigns deep existential meaning to eating behaviors. By developing the LOC, the authors aimed to:

• Provide a reliable, theoretically rigorous measurement tool capable of assessing the variance in consumers’ moral, sensory, and systemic convictions toward regional food networks.
• Disentangle ideological food orientation from confounding cognitive biases, such as mere geographic proximity preference (“hometown bias”), generalized anti-capitalist or anti-corporate sentiment, and nationalistic consumer ethnocentrism.
• Facilitate cross-disciplinary empirical research across marketing, agricultural economics, social psychology, and nutritional sciences to explain non-rational consumer choices and normative commitments.
• Enable agribusiness enterprises, organic cooperatives, regional policymakers, and supply-chain stakeholders to segment market populations accurately, tailor communication narratives, and avoid generic greenwashing campaigns that fail to resonate with deeply committed ideological consumers.

5. Psychological Construct

The Locavore Scale models locavorism not as an isolated behavioral habit, but as a tripartite consumer ideology. In consumer psychology, an ideology represents a shared, normative system of beliefs, values, and practices that constructs social reality and dictates prescriptive action. The scale operationalizes this ideology across three foundational, correlated dimensions:

1. Lionization

Lionization captures the cognitive idealization and sensory elevation of locally grown food. Consumers high in this dimension evaluate local agricultural goods as inherently, objectively, and qualitatively superior to non-local counterparts. This dimension extends beyond objective sensory evaluation; it involves a halo effect wherein the attribution of “local” imbues products with perceptions of peak freshness, richer flavor profiles, heightened nutritional density, and chemical purity. For example, an individual scoring high on Lionization will assert that an heirloom tomato acquired at a nearby farmers’ market possesses an intrinsic gourmet flavor and vitamin profile that industrial agriculture cannot match, viewing conventional supermarket produce as degraded, artificially ripened, and nutrient-depleted due to protracted transportation intervals.

2. Opposition

Opposition represents the defensive, antagonistic, and moralized dimension of locavorism directed against the globalized, industrial food complex. This dimension manifests as systemic skepticism toward multinational agribusinesses, long-distance supply logistics, synthetic preservation methods, and centralized distribution networks. It encompasses perceived risk, ethical outrage, and affective resistance against the commodification and opacity of corporate food production. An ideological consumer high in Opposition does not merely prefer local food; they actively condemn the ecological exploitation, carbon footprint, and alienation inherent in shipping food across continents, often viewing corporate agribusiness as an adversarial entity that compromises human health and ecological integrity.

3. Communalization

Communalization reflects the prosocial, community-building, and socio-economic motivation embedded within local eating. This dimension conceptualizes food acquisition as an act of civic duty, reciprocal social support, and cultural preservation. Through the lens of Communalization, purchasing food is fundamentally an economic vote designed to sustain regional family farmers, retain wealth within the municipal boundary, and cultivate direct, humanized social ties between urban consumers and rural producers. A consumer scoring high on this dimension experiences deep psychological meaningfulness and moral satisfaction from the realization that their capital directly bolsters the livelihoods of neighbors and protects regional agricultural traditions from erasure.

6. Theoretical Framework

The formulation of the Locavore Scale is grounded in several prominent psychological and sociological frameworks, integrating principles of Moral Foundations Theory, System Justification Theory, and the sociology of consumption.

Consumer Culture Theory and Ideological Consumption

Drawing on Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), the authors position food consumption not as an act of utilitarian caloric replenishment, but as a primary medium for identity construction, myth-making, and ideological contestation. Modern food systems are characterized by profound spatial and psychological distance between the consumer and the origin of their food. Locavorism arises as a counter-hegemonic cultural ideology that seeks to “re-embed” economic transactions into moral and geographic frameworks. By framing eating as an ideological act, the scale acknowledges that locavores derive sacred and symbolic value from supporting short-circuit supply chains, viewing their choices as moral imperatives rather than mundane market preferences.

Moral Elevation and System Opposition

The scale integrates dual-process socio-cognitive mechanisms: an approach orientation toward sacred local entities (Lionization and Communalization) and an avoidance/conflict orientation toward perceived institutional corruption (Opposition). Grounded in psychological theories of moralization, everyday practices become imbued with deontological duties. Opposition acts as a counter-systemic critique, where globalized agriculture is perceived as violating moral foundations of purity, harm prevention, and fairness. Conversely, Communalization leverages the in-group loyalty foundation, emphasizing relational embeddedness, mutual interdependence, and reciprocal care within one’s socio-geographic ingroup.

7. Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Locavore Scale was established through a series of rigorous empirical evaluations across eight independent samples in the foundational research program by Reich et al. (2018).

Convergent Validity

The LOC displays strong convergent validity through robust, statistically significant correlations with theoretical correlates of sustainable and ethical consumption. It correlates positively with:

• General environmental concern and ecological worldview (measured via the New Ecological Paradigm, $r \approx .35\text{ to }.45$).
• Motivations for natural and organic food consumption ($r > .50$).
• Community orientation and civic participation scales ($r \approx .40$).

Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for all three latent dimensions exceed the standard .50 threshold, establishing that the latent constructs account for the majority of the variance in their respective measurement items.

Discriminant Validity

To demonstrate that the LOC does not merely repackage preexisting socio-psychological constructs, the authors executed rigorous discriminant validity assessments using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and nested model comparisons. Specifically, the LOC was empirically differentiated from:

• Hometown Bias: Unlike provincialism or an unreflective preference for items simply originating from one’s birth city, the LOC captures a systematic philosophy of food production that applies universally to local systems, rather than an egocentric affective attachment to one’s specific municipality.
• Consumer Ethnocentrism (CETSCALE): While ethnocentrism focuses on national economic protectionism and xenophobic aversion to foreign imports, locavorism operates at regional/municipal tiers and focuses heavily on health, taste, freshness, and ecological ethics rather than nationalist defense.
• Anticorporatism: While the Opposition dimension touches on institutional skepticism, the overall LOC construct remained distinct from generalized anti-corporate hostility, maintaining unique variance in food domains.
• Political Ideology: The authors established that while liberalism correlates modestly with locavorism, the LOC captures unique variance across both conservative and liberal cohorts, demonstrating that conservative locavores embrace the construct through traditionalist, agrarian, and localized free-enterprise lenses.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Across laboratory experiments and field investigations, the LOC consistently outperformed broader environmental and food scales in predicting consequential outcomes:

• Incentivized Product Choice: In double-blind choice tasks involving real economic consequences, participants with elevated LOC scores overwhelmingly chose local foodstuffs over identical non-local options, even when the local option incurred a higher financial cost.
• Willingness to Pay (WTP): The scale significantly predicted increased financial premiums for locally certified produce.
• Brand Evangelism and Word-of-Mouth (WOM): The Communalization and Opposition subscales predicted consumer willingness to engage in advocacy, publicly defend local farmers, and persuade social networks to boycott industrial producers.
• Advertising Responsiveness: In experimental manipulations of advertising appeals, high-LOC consumers exhibited elevated perceived meaningfulness, brand attitude, and purchase intent specifically when marketing framed food through communal and localized narratives rather than mass-scale convenience appeals.

8. Reliability

The Locavore Scale demonstrates high psychometric reliability across diverse populations, sample contexts, and testing intervals.

Internal Consistency

Across the developmental and validation studies conducted by Reich, Beck, and Price (2018), internal consistency was calculated for both individual subdimensions and the global instrument. The observed Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) and composite reliability ($CR$) metrics consistently exceed conventional psychometric standards ($lpha ge .70$):

• Global Locavore Scale: Overall scale internal consistency regularly ranged from $\alpha = .91$ to $\alpha = .94$.
• Lionization Subscale: Internal consistency estimates ranged from $\alpha = .84$ to $\alpha = .89$.
• Opposition Subscale: Internal consistency estimates ranged from $\alpha = .82$ to $\alpha = .88$.
• Communalization Subscale: Internal consistency estimates ranged from $\alpha = .86$ to $\alpha = .91$.

Test-Retest Reliability

To evaluate temporal stability, the scale was administered across longitudinal waves with multi-week intervals. Test-retest reliability coefficients exhibited strong consistency ($r_{tt} > .80$, $p < .001$), confirming that the LOC captures an enduring consumer ideology rather than fluctuating, situational affective states.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Locavore Scale was identified and confirmed using rigorous exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) protocols across independent consumer samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial item pools reflecting the multi-faceted nature of locavorism were subjected to principal axis factoring with oblique rotation (e.g., Promax), accommodating hypothesized inter-factor correlations. Eigenvalues and scree plot inspection confirmed a clear three-factor solution accounting for the majority of common variance. Item retention was governed by strict inclusion criteria: item-to-factor loadings exceeding .60, cross-loadings remaining below .30, and high conceptual relevance to the theoretical definitions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent validation studies utilized CFA with maximum likelihood estimation to verify the factor structure. The hypothesized three-factor model was formally contrasted against competing alternative specifications:

• A single-factor (unidimensional) model where all items loaded on a single global locavorism factor.
• A two-factor model collapsing Lionization and Communalization into a single dimension versus Opposition.
• The proposed three-factor correlated model (Lionization, Opposition, Communalization).
• A second-order hierarchical model wherein a general Locavore Ideology higher-order construct accounts for the covariance among the three first-order factors.

The CFA results established that both the correlated three-factor model and the hierarchical second-order model exhibited superior and acceptable goodness-of-fit indices, significantly outperforming unidimensional and two-factor models:

• Model Fit Indices:
  • $\chi^2 / df < 2.50$
  • Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $ge .96$
  • Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $ge .95$
  • Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.045 – .058$ ($90%\text{ CI } [.038, .067]$)
  • Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $le .042$
• All standardized factor loadings on designated latent variables were statistically significant ($p < .001$) and exceeded .70, demonstrating strong parameter stability and construct representation.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Locavore Scale is structured as an operational self-report survey designed for research, diagnostic, and market-analytic settings:

• Instrument Type: Multidimensional psychometric self-report questionnaire.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), or online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics).
• Target Population: Adult consumers, grocery shoppers, and food-system participants.
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert rating format:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Dimensional Structure:
  • Lionization Subscale: Focuses on beliefs regarding the superior taste, freshness, healthiness, and natural quality of local foods.
  • Opposition Subscale: Focuses on suspicion, systemic critique, and ethical resistance toward corporate, distant, and mass-industrialized food distribution.
  • Communalization Subscale: Focuses on economic solidarity, civic engagement, and community preservation via local food commerce.
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Subscale scores are generated by calculating the arithmetic mean of items corresponding to each respective dimension.
  • An aggregate, composite Locavore Ideology score can be computed by calculating the grand mean across all items, provided the user confirms internal consistency across dimensions within their sample.
  • Higher scores indicate stronger alignment with locavore ideology.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2018.
• Original Publication Source: Journal of Consumer Research (Oxford University Press), Volume 45, Issue 4, Pages 849–868.
• Copyright & Intellectual Property: Copyright © 2018 by the Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
• Research & Academic Usage: The scale items, theoretical frameworks, and validation procedures were published for scholarly inquiry. Academic researchers may typically utilize the scale for non-commercial, educational, and empirical studies without royalty fees, citing the foundational paper by Reich, Beck, and Price (2018).
• Commercial Usage: For commercial assessment, proprietary consumer profiling, or marketing agency application, permission must be formally obtained via Oxford University Press or the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).

12. References

Below are primary foundational references for the scale and relevant theoretical foundations in APA 7th edition format:

• Alkon, A. H., & Agyeman, J. (Eds.). (2011). Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8922.001.0001
• 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
• Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00002-4
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Luchs, M. G., Naylor, R. W., Irwin, J. R., & Raghunathan, R. (2010). The sustainability liability: Potential negative effects of ethicality on product preference. Journal of Marketing, 74(5), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.74.5.018
• Reich, B. J., Beck, J. T., & Price, J. (2018). Food as ideology: Measurement and validation of locavorism. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(4), 849–868. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy027
• 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

13. Items of the Scale