The Attitude Toward Consuming the Food (ATCF)<\/strong> scale is a concise, highly reliable, three-item semantic differential scale<\/a> designed to evaluate an individual's immediate, affective, and hedonic orientation toward the consumption of a targeted edible product. Developed and psychometrically validated by Keh, Wang, and Yan (2021)<\/a> within the domain of consumer psychology and retail marketing, the instrument operationalizes consumer evaluations across three bipolar affective anchors: dislikable\/likable<\/em>, unenjoyable\/enjoyable<\/em>, and unpleasurable\/pleasurable<\/em>. Originally applied to investigate how imaginative, creative product arrangements stimulate consumer desire and purchase intentions for confectionery items, the scale addresses a critical methodological need for a parsimonious, unidimensional measure of consumer food liking that avoids survey fatigue while preserving psychometric rigor. Measured on a 7-point continuum, the ATCF captures hedonic anticipation\u2014a fundamental cognitive-affective precursor to eating behavior, impulse buying, and willingness to pay. Across empirical studies, the scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach\u2019s $\\alpha$<\/span> frequently exceeding .90, composite reliability $> .90$<\/span>) and robust convergent, discriminant, and predictive validities within structural equation modeling (SEM<\/a>) frameworks. The ATCF provides sensory researchers, behavioral economists, nutritional psychologists, and marketing scholars with an efficient metric for testing interventions involving visual food cues, retail atmospherics, packaging aesthetics, and sensory marketing.<\/p>\n Attitude Toward Consuming the Food, ATCF, food psychology, hedonic consumption, consumer behavior, sensory marketing, semantic differential, visual merchandising, purchase intention, food attitude measurement<\/p>\n The Attitude Toward Consuming the Food scale was developed and introduced by an international team of researchers in marketing, consumer psychology, and retail strategy:<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward Consuming the Food (ATCF) scale is to quantify an individual\u2019s subjective, affective, and hedonic predisposition toward ingesting a designated food product following exposure to specific environmental, visual, or contextual stimuli. In experimental consumer psychology, sensory science, and food choice research, scholars frequently require an immediate, post-exposure assessment of how appealing consumption feels to the consumer. Conventional measures of general brand attitude or broad product evaluations often conflate utilitarian value (such as nutritional content, price-value perceptions, or healthfulness) with pure hedonic anticipation (pleasure, sensory enjoyment, and affective liking).<\/p>\n The ATCF isolates the hedonic reward expectation<\/strong> associated with consuming a specific food. It serves several core research and applied purposes:<\/p>\n The ATCF operationalizes the construct of hedonic food consumption attitude<\/strong>. In psychological literature, an attitude is defined as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken<\/a>, 1993). When directed toward food consumption, attitudes possess dual facets: utilitarian (instrumental, health-focused, functional) and hedonic (affective, sensory, experiential).<\/p>\n The ATCF concentrates exclusively on the affective-hedonic dimension<\/strong>, which represents the sensory gratification, anticipated joy, and emotional pleasure derived from eating. The three items of the scale measure complementary aspects of this single latent construct:<\/p>\n This item captures the fundamental, immediate directional valence that an individual assigns to the prospect of eating the food item. Evaluative conditioning and sensory appraisal initiate an immediate approach-avoidance response. Evaluating an item as “likable” reflects an intuitive baseline positive valence toward sensory ingestion, reflecting early-stage affective processing within the human reward system.<\/p>\n Enjoyment extends beyond simple liking by incorporating an experiential, process-oriented dimension. In the psychology of eating, “enjoyment” denotes the cognitive and emotional immersion experienced during consumption. Measuring whether an act is perceived as unenjoyable or enjoyable captures the respondent's mental simulation of the eating experience itself, evaluating the temporal process of savoring the texture, taste, and sensory properties of the food.<\/p>\n Pleasure is the core neurobiological and psychological currency of hedonic reward (Berridge & Kringelbach<\/a>, 2015). This bipolar pair assesses the anticipated neuro-affective payoff of consumption\u2014the degree to which eating the product is expected to stimulate hedonic neurocircuitry, relieve sensory craving, and induce positive affective states. In contexts involving sweet, savory, or rich foods (such as the confectionery products evaluated in Keh et al., 2021), anticipated pleasure constitutes the dominant psychological driver of consumption intention.<\/p>\n Together, these three items form a unified, unidimensional continuum reflecting an individual\u2019s holistic hedonic orientation toward consuming the stimulus. Rather than evaluating whether the food is healthy, economical, or practical, the ATCF measures how pleasurable and emotionally rewarding the act of eating is anticipated to be.<\/p>\n The Attitude Toward Consuming the Food scale is grounded in several foundational paradigms within social psychology, sensory marketing, and behavioral economics:<\/p>\n Originating in environmental psychology (Mehrabian & Russell<\/a>, 1974), the S-O-R framework posits that environmental stimuli ($S$<\/span>) influence internal organismic states ($O$<\/span>), comprising affective and cognitive evaluations, which subsequently drive behavioral responses ($R$<\/span>). In the empirical framework of Keh et al. (2021), imaginative food displays act as the environmental stimulus ($S$<\/span>), the Attitude Toward Consuming the Food represents the central internal affective organismic reaction ($O$<\/span>), and purchase intention or actual buying behavior constitutes the behavioral response ($R$<\/span>). The ATCF serves as the critical psychological mediator explaining why visual creativity translates into commercial and consumption outcomes.<\/p>\n Pioneered by Holbrook and Hirschman<\/a> (1982), Hedonic Consumption Theory posits that consumer behavior is frequently driven not by rational, information-processing problem solving, but by the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun. Food products\u2014particularly confectionery, desserts, gourmet snacks, and luxury foods\u2014are predominantly consumed for sensory and emotional gratification. The ATCF provides an operational vehicle for measuring this hedonic pursuit, capturing the emotional resonance that arises when consumers mentally simulate the consumption of aesthetically appealing food.<\/p>\n According to grounded cognition theory (Barsalou<\/a>, 2008) and sensory marketing frameworks (Krishna<\/a>, 2012), visual exposure to appealing food stimuli automatically triggers sensorimotor simulations of eating. When consumers view an imaginative food display or high-definition culinary depiction, their working memory simulates the taste, mouthfeel, and visceral pleasure of ingestion. The ATCF quantifies the output of this spontaneous mental simulation, registering the intensity of anticipated hedonic gratification before any physical consumption occurs.<\/p>\n In Ajzen's<\/a> (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior, specific attitudes toward a behavior directly predict behavioral intentions and subsequent actions. The ATCF adheres strictly to Ajzen's principle of compatibility: rather than measuring a broad attitude toward an abstract category (e.g., “attitude toward candy” or “attitude toward the store”), it measures the precise behavioral attitude toward consuming the specific food<\/em> item, thereby maximizing its predictive power for downstream consumption behaviors.<\/p>\n The psychometric validity of the ATCF scale has been substantiated across multiple laboratory experiments and field settings:<\/p>\n The three items\u2014likable<\/em>, enjoyable<\/em>, and pleasurable<\/em>\u2014directly mirror the universal lexical and psychological definitions of hedonic food valuation. Expert review in consumer research confirms that the semantic differential pairings adequately represent the construct space of sensory and affective food appraisal without introducing confounding utilitarian dimensions such as healthiness, nutrition, or affordability.<\/p>\n In structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA<\/a>), the ATCF exhibits robust convergent validity:<\/p>\n The scale demonstrates clear empirical separation from related yet theoretically distinct constructs:<\/p>\n The ATCF exhibits strong predictive utility within consumer behavior models:<\/p>\n The ATCF scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency across diverse empirical investigations and experimental conditions:<\/p>\n Because the ATCF is designed primarily as a state-based evaluative measure of immediate hedonic reaction to a stimulus, test-retest reliability across long time intervals is naturally subject to changes in visceral state (such as hunger, satiety, and sensory-specific satiety). However, in controlled laboratory conditions assessing repeated exposures without intervening consumption or metabolic shifts, short-term stability coefficients remain high ($r > .80$<\/span>).<\/p>\n Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA<\/a>) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA<\/a>) verify that the ATCF is an impeccably unidimensional instrument.<\/p>\n When subjected to principal axis factoring or principal component analysis with unconstrained extraction criteria:<\/p>\n In structural equation modeling frameworks, the measurement model for the ATCF exhibits outstanding fit indices when modeled as a three-indicator single latent variable:<\/p>\n The technical parameters and administration specifications of the Attitude Toward Consuming the Food scale are summarized below:<\/p>\n The Attitude Toward Consuming the Food scale was published in 2021<\/strong> by Hean Tat Keh, Di Wang, and Li Yan in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science<\/em> (Volume 49, Issue 1, pages 117\u2013137), published by Springer. Under standard academic fair use principles, the scale items may be utilized, reproduced, and adapted for non-commercial academic research, empirical theses, and educational purposes without payment of licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors and publication (Keh, Wang, & Yan, 2021<\/a>). Commercial applications, proprietary software integrations, or retail consulting deployments should consult the copyright holder (Springer Nature \/ Academy of Marketing Science) regarding permissions.<\/p>\n Comprehensive academic overview of the Attitude Toward Consuming the Food (ATCF) scale developed by Keh, Wang, and Yan (2021), featuring psychometric properties, theoretical underpinnings, and authentic scale items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[1076,2,13200],"tags":[18327,18328,1011,2849,3313,6,2376,3180,3217],"class_list":["post-5657","psych_scale","type-psych_scale","status-publish","hentry","category-consumer-psychology","category-psychometrics","category-sensory-marketing","tag-atcf","tag-attitude-toward-consuming-the-food","tag-consumer-psychology","tag-food-choice","tag-hedonic-consumption","tag-psychometrics","tag-semantic-differential","tag-sensory-marketing","tag-visual-merchandising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/5657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/psych_scale"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/5657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Keywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Dislikable \/ Likable (Overall Affective Valence)<\/h3>\n
2. Unenjoyable \/ Enjoyable (Anticipated Experiential Engagement)<\/h3>\n
3. Unpleasurable \/ Pleasurable (Sensory and Hedonic Gratification)<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
1. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) Model<\/h3>\n
2. Hedonic Consumption Theory<\/h3>\n
3. Mental Simulation and Grounded Cognition<\/h3>\n
4. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Content and Face Validity<\/h3>\n
Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
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Predictive and Nomological Validity<\/h3>\n
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Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Stability<\/h3>\n
Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Exploratory Factor Analysis<\/h3>\n
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Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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$$\\text{ATCF Index} = \\frac{\\text{Likable} + \\text{Enjoyable} + \\text{Pleasurable}}{3}$$<\/span>
\n Higher scores indicate a more positive, favorable hedonic anticipation of consuming the food.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nPermissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n
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13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)<\/h2>\n