中国旅游消费者权力量表构建与有效性检验

Development and Validity Examination of Consumer Power Scale

近年来,随着交易中消费者影响力的不断增强,对消费者权力的研究迫切需要深入和丰富。本研究借鉴以往消费者权力理论,利用扎根理论方法进一步解构权力的维度,并在此基础之上编制量表的测量题项。通过专家评价、题项分析和探索性因子分析,开发了消费者权力测量量表,应用验证性因子分析、分层回归和结构方程对量表的各项效度进行了检验。本文不仅为今后消费者权力的研究提供了有效的测量工具,而且检验了消费者权力的实际效用,为消费者权力理论提供了实证支撑。

This paper, based on the investigation of tourism consumers, intends to establish a Consumer Power Scale （CPS） , which would provide a basic measure method of future quantitative study on consumer power. Adop ting a rigorous scale development procedure, at first, the grounded theory is applied to draw a connection between concepts of consumer power and its performance. In the encoding stage, consumer power has been further ana lyzed. Moreover a new subpower, Participant Power, is discovered. In order to verify it, all related categories are incorporated into questionnaire design, and a total of 72 items are evaluated by six experts in this field. They unan imously approve that the participant power should be involved in the scale. Ultimately 43 items are maintained. Then, 12 graduate students from Marketing and Tourism Management, as well as 8 employees of tourism industry are invited to participate in the pretest. After deletion, the final pretest questionnaire that contains 39 items is allo cated on the internet, and altogether 81 valid questioners are received. Next, the research employ critical ration calculation, correlation analysis, and homogeneity test to do the factor analysis. 11 items are removed, and the re maining 28 ones were organized into the formal questionnaire. At last, 473 useful questionnaires are collected, and through Exploratory Factor Analysis, eight factors are extracted, named Sanction Power, Legitimate Power, Given Power, Participant Power, Information Power, Expert Power, Exercize Capability and Exercize Awareness separate ly. Afterwards, to test the convergent validity and discriminant validity, a series of oneand twofactor Confirmatory Factor Analysis models are conducted. The results, together with the AVE estimates, and the comparison of squared correlations between factors generally proved the construct validity of the scale. Furthermore, taking the perception risk and consumer satisfaction as criterion variables, the regression analysis indicates that after being in troduced, the consumer power contributes dramatically to the explanation of criterion variable, which reveals the in creased validity. Lastly, a nomological network combining consumer power, perception risk and satisfaction has been set up. And all of the hypotheses were supported through the estimates of structural equation modeling, which prove a good nomological validity. Above all, the overall analysis demonstrate that the CPS is valid and reliable. There are several contributions of this paper. First, CPS, which is the principal dedication, provides an effec tive route to measure the consumer power. Second, during the process of scale development, participant power, as a new subpower, is found. On the grounds of power source, it is significantly distinguished from other five. More importantly, participant power＇ s discriminant validity is evident when compared with other dimensions, which illus trates how unique it is. This achievement further perfects the original conceptual scale of consumer power. Last, previous researches of consumer power and empower are rooted in the same hypothesis, that is, with the increase of consumer power, the status of consumers in the trade could be improved, and finally, a satisfied consumption expe rience could be expected. However, because of lacking a measure scale, the hypothesis is left unverified. In the procedure of examining the increased and nomological validity, the relations between consumer power and consumer satisfaction are con firmed by CPS. These results reveal that the consumer power positively influences satisfaction, and the enhance ment of power would result in a more satisfied experience. These offer evidence for the theories of consumer power and empower. Correspondingly, the practical significance of this paper is, from the perspective of consumer, de picting how important the consumer power is. And as the power grows, future consumers are capable of avoiding the risks. In addition, tourism enterprises, on the one hand, have to deal with the competition from the counterparts and need to confront the challenges of the improved consumer power on the other hand. Consequently, the power of enterprises is weaken, which leads to a reexamination of their roles and the transformation of their foremost opera tion patterns and marketing strategies. Meanwhile, the conclusions could provide managers and particular managers in tourism industry some new thinking： consumer power is able to be an efficacious way to protect consumers＇ rights addition to laws.