UC Santa Cruz

Recent research has shown that distrust for a company is not merely the opposite of trust. Rather, it is a distinct construct that exists parallel to trust. Nevertheless, researchers studying distrust for a company have so far typically relied on reverse-worded trust scales which only apply to a single company. I created the Consumer Distrust in Specific Company Scale (CDISCS), a four-subscale instrument which can be deployed flexibly across most companies. Through three studies deploying the scale to participants on Mechanical Turk, I provide evidence for the current reliability and validity of the scale. I demonstrate the scale’s high retest reliability, differential reliability across demographic comparisons, and ability to measure changes in consumer distrust in response to an authentic corporate scandal. I note that the internal consistency, inter-item correlations and inter-scale correlations of the Incompetence, Malevolence, and Intentions subscales are higher than desired, though within the same range as other trust and distrust scales considered validated in prior research. The CDISCS should therefore be considered equally ready to deploy as other published trust and distrust scales that have these features.