Dark Narrative Transportation Scale

Abstract

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale (DNTS) was developed by Campbell, Sands, and Ferraro in 2023 to precisely quantify consumer perceptions regarding advertisements that leverage dark storytelling. This 3-item measurement tool originated from Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2010) conceptual framework concerning dark transportation and was rigorously refined through extensive psychometric analyses. The scale was validated using a sample of adult U.S. respondents recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Reported results confirm its strong Factor analysis, reliability, and validity. The DNTS specifically isolates and measures the construct of Narrative Transportation within the unique context of dark, compelling narratives presented in advertising materials.

Keywords

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

Authors

Campbell, Colin; Sands, Sean; Ferraro, Carla

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale is to provide a specialized measure for assessing the degree of psychological immersion, or narrative transportation, experienced by an audience when exposed to advertising content that features dark or unsettling stories. Standard transportation scales often fail to capture the unique cognitive and emotional effects generated by narratives containing dark themes, necessitating a dedicated instrument like the DNTS.

By focusing specifically on dark stories within advertisements, the scale allows researchers and marketers to better understand how emotionally intense and potentially negative narrative content influences consumer perceptions and memory recall, thereby offering insights into strategic marketing effectiveness.

Construct

The DNTS measures a specific dimension of Narrative Transportation. Narrative transportation is generally defined as the psychological state of being immersed in a story. The “dark” aspect of this scale focuses on the intense, memorable, and often difficult-to-forget nature of narratives characterized by themes that are serious, unsettling, or morally ambiguous.

The scale items are designed to capture the respondent’s deep engagement and preoccupation with the dark imagery or scene presented in the advertisement, suggesting that the narrative has successfully absorbed the consumer’s attention and cognitive resources, distinguishing it from transportation driven by purely positive or neutral content.

Validity

The scale demonstrated robust evidence of Discriminant validity, confirming that the measurement of transportation specific to dark stories is a distinct construct separate from general transportation scales. The DNTS correlated at a low 0.180 with the Escalas (2004) scale and 0.348 with the Green and Brock (2000) scale, supporting its uniqueness.

Furthermore, when comparing responses to control images (non-dark content), the mean score for the DNTS (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). Researchers interpreted this lower score in the control condition as potentially indicative of superior scale performance, as the DNTS was appropriately less activated by non-dark content.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. The scale exhibited good internal reliability throughout the development process, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.61 to 0.89 across various testing phases. The final, validated 3-item scale reported a high internal consistency value of 0.89, confirming the coherence of the items in measuring the underlying construct.

Factor Analysis

The psychometric development of the scale included an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to confirm its underlying structure. The EFA results strongly supported a unidimensional structure, revealing a single underlying factor with an eigenvalue of 4.75. This single factor successfully accounted for 68% of the total explained variance in the data.

The development process was characterized by rigorous item reduction to achieve parsimony. Initially, two scale items were removed due to low factor loadings. Subsequently, two additional items were discarded because of their semantic similarity to retained items. This systematic refinement led to the final selection of three items for the DNTS, all of which demonstrated sufficient factor loadings on the single identified factor.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Rating Scale

Format: Participants are instructed to respond to the 3 items on the scale. Responses are gathered in reference to a set of three experimental images depicting dark stories, as well as a corresponding set of three control images (non-dark stories).

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, primarily recruited through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform (2/5).

Test Methodology: The comprehensive methodology employed in the scale’s development included assessment of Test Validity, Discriminant Validity (3/5), Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis (3/5), and Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Advertisements, Consumer Perceptions, Dark storytelling, Narrative Transportation (3/5)

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

Affiliation 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

Reference’s

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

The scale’s conceptual basis was derived from Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2010) work on dark transportation.

Items of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

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