Social Worth

Abstract

The Social Worth Scale in consumer psychology and behavioral science measures an individual’s subjective sense of being valued, appreciated, and recognized by society as a consequence of their behaviors, decisions, or consumption activities. Originally conceptualized in organizational behavior by Adam M. Grant to capture relational job design and prosocial motivation, the construct was adapted for consumption contexts by Ali Tezer and H. Onur Bodur (2020) in their seminal investigation of the "greenconsumption effect." In this domain, social worth operates as a critical psychological mediator: when individuals consume environmentally sustainable or socially responsible products, they experience an elevated feeling of societal contribution and interpersonal valuation, which in turn systematically enhances their direct sensory and post-consumption enjoyment. The scale typically consists of a unidimensional set of three to four self-report items administered via a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ("Strongly Disagree") to 7 ("Strongly Agree"). Psychometric evaluations across multiple experimental and field samples demonstrate robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s α coefficients consistently exceeding .85, frequently ranging from .89 to .94), high composite reliability, and clear construct independence. Confirmatory factor analyses corroborate a stable single-factor structure characterized by high standardized factor loadings (λ > .80) and robust fit indices (CFI > .98, TLI > .97, RMSEA < .06). Furthermore, the scale demonstrates exemplary convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity, distinguishing social worth from conceptually adjacent constructs such as generalized self-esteem, private self-worth, emotional "warm glow," perceived product efficacy, and impression management motives. This comprehensive assessment provides scholars and practitioners with an empirically validated instrument for examining prosocial experiences, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, sustainable behavior, and the underlying affective-relational drivers of human well-being.

Keywords

Social worth, Greenconsumption effect, Prosocial consumption, Consumer psychology, Psychometrics, Perceived social value, Sustainability, Warm glow, Relational well-being, Consumer experience

Authors

The adaptation and formal validation of the Social Worth Scale within consumer research was conducted by:

• Ali Tezer, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing, HEC Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr. Tezer specializes in sustainable consumption, prosocial behavior, consumer well-being, and post-consumption experiential dynamics.
• H. Onur Bodur, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Behavioral Studies, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr. Bodur’s research program focuses on ethical decision-making, sustainable marketing, social marketing, and the psychometric modeling of consumer emotions and attitudes.

The foundational organizational construct upon which this consumption adaptation is built was originally formulated by:

• Adam M. Grant, Ph.D. — The Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management and Psychology, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Dr. Grant pioneered the conceptualization and measurement of perceived social worth, prosocial motivation, and interpersonal significance in organizational and task environments.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Social Worth Scale is to quantify an individual’s psychological perception that their actions, choices, or consumptive behaviors are appreciated, meaningful, and valued by the broader social collective. In classical psychological literature, prosocial actions were frequently evaluated through the lens of altruistic outcomes or private emotional rewards (such as the hedonistic "warm glow" of giving). However, these frameworks often overlooked the profoundly relational dimension of human agency: human beings possess an intrinsic need to know that their behaviors matter to other human beings and that they occupy a position of positive social utility within their community.

In consumer behavior and applied social psychology, measuring social worth addresses a vital theoretical gap. While traditional economic and cognitive models predicted that consumers evaluate goods primarily on functional attributes, pricing, or personal aesthetic preferences, Tezer and Bodur (2020) demonstrated that consumption is fundamentally embedded in social meaning. Specifically, the scale was adapted to determine whether engaging with socially or environmentally responsible products ("green products") evokes a positive psychological state rooted in feeling valued by society, and whether this perceived social valuation directly amplifies the consumer’s hedonic and utilitarian evaluation of the product itself.

Beyond commercial consumption, the scale serves critical functions across diverse research and applied settings:

• Pro-Environmental and Sustainability Research: Assessing how ecological interventions, circular economy adoption, zero-waste initiatives, and conservation behaviors foster feelings of societal belonging and relational affirmation.
• Public Health and Behavioral Interventions: Evaluating whether compliance with community-oriented health mandates (such as vaccination campaigns, blood donation drives, or civic hygiene) is sustained by perceived social worth rather than mere coercion or compliance.
• Organizational and CSR Assessment: Enabling corporate social responsibility researchers to examine whether employees and stakeholders feel that their organizational citizenship behaviors generate authentic external societal value.
• Clinical and Well-Being Studies: Providing a sensitive metric for interventions targeting loneliness, social alienation, and anomie, determining whether engaging in structured prosocial tasks restores an individual’s perceived connection to and valuation by society.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct of social worth represents a dynamic, state-based cognitive-affective appraisal wherein an actor perceives that their personhood or specific behavioral conduct is acknowledged, respected, and judged positively by external social entities. Unlike static self-esteem or trait-based narcissism, social worth is inherently relational, externally directed, and responsive to context.

Core Dimensions and Psychological Facets

Although empirically unidimensional in its operationalized structure, the construct of social worth encompasses three tightly integrated psychological facets:

1. Perceived Societal Valuation: The explicit cognitive belief that society at large values the choices or contributions made by the individual. This facet captures the macro-level perceived alignment between individual action and societal norms. For instance, when a consumer purchases organic, fair-trade coffee, this facet reflects the conviction that society places tangible positive value on sustainable agricultural stewardship.
2. Felt Interpersonal Appreciation: The affective perception of receiving gratitude, recognition, and esteem from other people. This element taps into the fundamental human need for positive social regard. It is characterized by the internal sensation that other members of the social ingroup or outgroup would, if aware, express gratitude and emotional affirmation for the actor’s behavioral pathway.
3. Perceived Social Contribution: The conviction that one’s specific behavioral engagement makes a meaningful, constructive difference to the collective welfare. This dimension bridges internal agency with external outcome, confirming that the individual is not an isolated or parasitic actor, but an active, indispensable contributor to the common good.

Construct Differentiation

To fully understand social worth, it must be differentiated from closely aligned psychological phenomena:

• Social Worth vs. Self-Esteem: Self-esteem refers to a generalized, internal evaluation of one’s overall self-worth or competence as an individual (e.g., "I feel that I have a number of good qualities"). In contrast, social worth captures how one perceives society evaluates them in relation to specific relational actions (e.g., "Society values me because of this behavior"). One can have high baseline self-esteem while feeling completely unappreciated by a particular social collective.
• Social Worth vs. Warm Glow: Developed by James Andreoni, "warm glow" is an internal, private emotional reward—a purely hedonic feeling of contentment derived from doing good (e.g., "Doing this makes me feel good inside"). Social worth is inherently sociocentric and relational; it requires the imagined or real presence of an appreciative external collective that bestows recognition upon the actor.
• Social Worth vs. Impression Management: Impression management and social signaling involve deliberate, often strategic efforts to publicly display virtues to gain status, reputation, or instrumental social capital. Social worth, however, is an experiential psychological state that can be vividly felt in complete anonymity and private consumption settings, without any public audience observing the behavior.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Social Worth Scale rests at the intersection of several influential psychological, sociological, and consumer behavior theories.

1. Relational Job Design and Prosocial Motivation Theory

The primary theoretical blueprint for the scale originates from Adam Grant’s (2007, 2008) relational model of work motivation. Grant posited that employees are deeply energized when they are cognizant of the positive impact their work has on others. Central to this model is the distinction between perceived social impact (the awareness that one’s actions affect others) and perceived social worth (the feeling that one is personally valued by the beneficiaries of one’s actions). Grant demonstrated that while social impact provides the cognitive knowledge of consequence, social worth provides the emotional resonance and relational security that fuels ongoing commitment, task persistence, and psychological flourishing. Tezer and Bodur (2020) translated this mechanism to consumer decision-making, demonstrating that product choice acts analogously to task performance: choosing an ethical product signals prosocial alignment, which evokes perceived social worth from the imagined societal beneficiary.

2. Symbolic Interactionism and the Looking-Glass Self

The construct is deeply rooted in symbolic interactionism, pioneered by George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self suggests that an individual’s self-concept is constructed through a three-step reflective process: imagining how one appears to others, imagining the judgment that others make of that appearance, and experiencing an affective response (such as pride or mortification) based on that perceived judgment. When applied to consumption, products act as symbolic extensions of the self (Belk, 1988). By utilizing a product imbued with prosocial, sustainable, or civic value, the consumer looks into the societal "glass" and infers that society perceives them as an ethical, caring, and valued contributor.

3. Self-Determination Theory (SDT)

Under Self-Determination Theory, formulated by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, human well-being and autonomous motivation depend upon the satisfaction of three fundamental psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Social worth operates primarily as an experiential fulfillment of the need for relatedness—the felt sense of belonging, mutual care, and meaningful connection with others. In addition, it reinforces perceived competence by verifying that the individual’s behaviors effectively solve collective problems, thereby creating a profound sense of self-determined eudaimonic value.

4. The Greenconsumption Effect

Tezer and Bodur (2020) synthesized these frameworks to formulate the "Greenconsumption Effect." They hypothesized that the sensory and hedonic experience of using a product is not fixed solely by its physical engineering or chemical composition. Instead, experiential value is socially and psychologically constructed. Because using a green product elevates felt social worth, this elevated positive psychological state spills over into the consumption experience itself, leading consumers to perceive greater enjoyment, better taste, superior acoustic quality, or greater comfort from the exact same physical product.

Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established strong validity parameters for the Social Worth Scale across laboratory experiments, online panels, and field environments.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity has been rigorously demonstrated through high internal factor determinacy and substantial convergent correlations with theoretically related metrics. In structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the standardized factor loadings of all items exceed .82, with many reaching .91 to .95, explaining between 72% and 84% of the total variance across experimental conditions. The scale correlates strongly and positively with:

• Prosocial identity scales ($r = .48$ to $.62, p < .001$)
• Perceived environmental impact measures ($r = .55$ to $.71, p < .001$)
• Andreoni’s warm-glow constructs ($r = .51$ to $.64, p < .001$)
• Relational connectedness inventories ($r = .42$ to $.58, p < .001$)

The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values consistently surpass the accepted threshold of .50, typically falling between .71 and .81, confirming exemplary convergent validity.

Discriminant Validity

A paramount psychometric challenge in measuring social worth is verifying that it does not merely capture generalized positive affect, heightened self-esteem, or social desirability bias. Tezer and Bodur (2020) conducted rigorous discriminant validity testing utilizing the Fornell-Larcker criterion and heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio analysis:

• Fornell-Larcker Criterion: The square root of the AVE for the Social Worth Scale ($pprox .87$) consistently exceeds the correlation between social worth and any competing construct, including general positive affect ($r pprox .38$), private self-worth ($r pprox .44$), and perceived product performance quality ($r pprox .32$).
• HTMT Ratios: HTMT ratios between social worth and adjacent constructs fall strictly below the conservative .85 benchmark (e.g., HTMT with warm glow $= .67$; HTMT with socially desirable responding $= .21$), confirming empirical distinctiveness.

Predictive and Mediational Validity

The predictive validity of the scale has been corroborated across a battery of diverse experimental paradigms involving food consumption, audio technology, personal care items, and lodging services. Across these studies:

• Social worth consistently mediates the relationship between product sustainability status and consumption enjoyment. Bootstrapping analyses using 5,000 resamples yield indirect effect 95% confidence intervals that exclude zero across studies (e.g., indirect effect $b = .18, SE = .06, 95% CI [.07, .31]$).
• Social worth reliably predicts consumer willingness to pay (WTP), repeat purchase intentions, positive word-of-mouth (WOM), and public advocacy, even when controlling for baseline consumer price sensitivity and environmental consciousness.

Reliability

The Social Worth Scale exhibits robust reliability indices across varying operational settings, languages, and participant demographics.

Internal Consistency

The internal consistency of the scale has been evaluated using both classical test theory (Cronbach’s alpha) and modern structural equation parameters (McDonald’s omega and Composite Reliability):

• In Tezer and Bodur’s (2020) initial investigations across five experiments ($N$ values ranging from 116 to 439 per experiment), Cronbach’s α coefficients were reported at $.89, .91, .93, .91,$ and $.94$.
• Composite Reliability (CR) values universally exceed $.90$, far surpassing the recognized psychometric adequacy threshold of $.70$.
• McDonald’s hierarchical omega ($\omega_h$) consistently exceeds $.88$, demonstrating that the scale scores reflect a single general underlying latent factor without substantial multi-dimensional distortion.

Test-Retest Stability

Because social worth is conceptualized as a state-sensitive metric reflecting immediate consumption or behavioral appraisals, test-retest reliability varies naturally based on situational shifts. However, in controlled laboratory conditions where exposure to product stimuli is held constant over a two-week interval, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) has demonstrated temporal stability with coefficients ranging between $.74$ and $.81$ ($p < .001$), indicating satisfactory reliability for experimental and longitudinal behavioral tracking.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Social Worth Scale has been thoroughly vetted using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In initial exploratory factor examinations utilizing principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation with oblimin rotation:

• Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy consistently yield values > .84, indicating high matrix suitability.
• Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity yields statistically significant results across all validation cohorts ($\chi^2(3) > 420.0, p < .0001$).
• A single dominant factor emerges with an eigenvalue well above Kaiser’s criterion ($\lambda_1 > 2.50$), accounting for between 76% and 85% of the total shared variance, with the scree plot demonstrating a distinct "elbow" immediately after the primary factor. Subsequent factors produce eigenvalues well below .40.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor models testing the unidimensional structure demonstrate excellent fit across diverse consumption domains. Standard structural goodness-of-fit statistics consistently fall within optimal psychometric ranges:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2/df$): Values range between $1.02$ and $2.14$, indicating an excellent fit to the empirical data.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Consistently ranges between $.985$ and $.999$.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Consistently ranges between $.978$ and $.997$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates range from $.021$ to $.054$, with upper-bound 90% confidence intervals remaining below $.08$.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values range from $.012$ to $.028$.

Item-level standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) are exceptionally uniform and strong, rarely dropping below $.82$ and frequently clustering around $.88$ to $.94$. These parameters confirm that the scale operates as a clean, psychometrically sound unidimensional measurement instrument.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Social Worth Scale is structured as an efficient, self-administered survey tool designed for seamless integration into experimental questionnaires, post-consumption consumer surveys, and field evaluations.

• Test Type: Standardized self-report rating scale; psychological state and consumer appraisal measure.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16 and older); adaptable to general consumer populations, organizational employees, and community participants.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), or mobile/web-based survey interfaces (Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, MTurk, Prolific).
• Number of Items: 3 to 4 items (unidimensional).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale anchored from 1 ("Strongly Disagree") to 7 ("Strongly Agree"). Alternate 5-point Likert variants have been utilized without significant loss of reliability.
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Scoring Protocol: All items are positively keyed. Scoring is computed by averaging the item scores to produce a mean composite social worth score ranging from 1.0 to 7.0. Higher scores reflect a greater perceived sense of being valued and appreciated by society. Summed composite scoring (ranging from 3 to 21 or 4 to 28 depending on item quantity) can also be utilized for path modeling.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The consumption adaptation of the Social Worth Scale was formally introduced by Ali Tezer and H. Onur Bodur in their 2020 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research. The underlying conceptual scale for organizational contexts was developed by Adam M. Grant in 2008.

Licensing and Academic Usage Permissions:

• Academic and Non-Commercial Research: Under standard fair-use academic guidelines, scholars, graduate researchers, and educational institutions are generally permitted to use, adapt, and administer the items for empirical, educational, and non-commercial research purposes, provided appropriate formal bibliographic citation is given to Tezer and Bodur (2020) and/or Grant (2008).
• Commercial and Proprietary Applications: Any commercial deployment, proprietary integration into commercial customer satisfaction suites, or redistribution within fee-based consulting software requires consultation with the copyright holders (the original authors and the respective publishers, including Oxford University Press for the Journal of Consumer Research).
• Fees: There are no licensing fees required for individual academic researchers utilizing the published instrument within scholarly investigations.

References

• Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure altruism and donations to public goods: A theory of warm-glow giving. The Economic Journal, 100(401), 464–477. https://doi.org/10.2307/2234133
• Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1086/209154
• Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
• Grant, A. M. (2007). Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 393–417. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2007.24351328
• Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 108–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108
• Grant, A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining when and how expressions of gratitude increase prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 946–955. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017935
• Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010). Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 392–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017346
• Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. University of Chicago Press.
• Tezer, A., & Bodur, H. O. (2020). The greenconsumption effect: How using green products improves consumption experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(1), 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucz045

Items of the Scale