Consumer Attitudes toward Responsible Entities in Sport (CARES): Scale development and model testing

The advancement of empirical research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been hindered by the lack of an appropriate measure of CSR perceptions among sport consumers. Consequently, researchers have yet to fully explore the ways in which consumer's attitudes impact their responses to CSR. This article first describes (in Study 1) the development and validation of a self-report scale designed to measure consumer attitudes toward CSR in sport. Two data collections were conducted to test the seven-item, Likert-type Consumer Attitudes toward Responsible Entities in Sport (CARES) scale with two dimensions (i.e., cognition and affect). Evidence is presented confirming the scale's internal consistency, validity, and dimensionality. In the second phase, Study 2 examined the influence of the scale dimensions on actual consumer purchasing using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggest that the attitude scale for CSR can be a useful tool for sport academicians to gauge the effects of social efforts and social policy formation.