Dark Narrative Transportation Scale

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Abstract

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale, developed by Campbell, Sands, and Ferraro in 2023, is designed to quantify consumer perceptions of advertisements that utilize dark storytelling. The scale’s content was derived from Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2010) conceptualization of dark transportation and refined through psychometric analyses. This 3-item scale was tested on a sample of U.S. respondents recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), with reported results for factor analysis, reliability, and validity. The scale aims to assess narrative transportation specifically within the context of dark stories presented in advertisements.

Keywords

Advertisements, Consumer Perceptions, Dark storytelling, Narrative Transportation, Consumer Attitudes, Narratives, Storytelling, Consumer Measures

Authors

Campbell, Colin; Sands, Sean; Ferraro, Carla

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Purpose

The primary purpose of this scale is to assess narrative transportation in the context of dark stories presented within advertisements.

Validity

Discriminant Validity: The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale demonstrated discriminant validity. It correlated at 0.180 with the Escalas (2004) scale and at 0.348 with the Green and Brock (2000) scale, suggesting that narrative transportation in dark stories is a distinct construct. For control images, the dark story scale mean (M = 2.18) was significantly lower than both the Escalas (2004) scale (M = 2.86, p = .01) and the Green and Brock (2000) scale (M = 3.01, p < .01). Although no expectation for differing scale means on control images existed, the lower score of the dark story narrative transportation scale in the control condition could be interpreted as superior performance.

Reliability

Internal Consistency: The scale exhibited good internal reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.61 to 0.89. The reported Cronbach’s alpha for the final scale was 0.89.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory Factor Analysis: Exploratory factor analysis revealed a single underlying factor with an eigenvalue of 4.75, accounting for 68% of the explained variance. Initially, two scale items were removed due to low factor loadings. Additionally, two other items were discarded due to semantic similarity and to ensure parsimony. This process resulted in the final selection of three items for the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale. All selected items had sufficient factor loadings.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Rating Scale
Format: Participants are instructed to respond to the 3 items in reference to three images depicting dark stories, as well as a corresponding set of three control images.
Language Available: English
Population Group: Human (Male and Female)
Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older)
Population Details: The study participants were adult respondents located in the United States.
Test Methodology: The methodology included Test Validity, Discriminant Validity, Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, and Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Advertisements, Consumer Perceptions, Dark storytelling, Narrative Transportation

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier:
Sands, Sean: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9192-3676
Ferraro, Carla: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3134-6712

Affiliation:
Campbell, Colin: Department of Marketing, University of San Diego School of Business
Sands, Sean: CXI Research Group, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology
Ferraro, Carla: Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology

Email addresses:
Campbell, Colin: [email protected]

Correspondence Address:
Campbell, Colin: [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Publisher
Fee: No
Test Year: 2023

References

Campbell, C., Sands, S., & Ferraro, C. (2023). How dark stories boost recall. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 31(7), 1279–1295. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2020.1755352

Items of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale

1. The image is difficult to get out of my mind

2. The scene in the image could be difficult to forget

3. The scene in the image is intriguing