Agents of Change: A Scale to Identify Diversity Seekers

<p>People who are interested in learning about and experiencing other cultures can be important to social and policy initiatives undertaken to motivate societal change. The authors develop a scale to identify "diversity seeking," which they define as a person's propensity to seek out cultural diversity in products, services, and experiences. They examine this scale in three experimental studies and show that the scale measures this propensity and is reliable, valid, and distinct from other constructs. The results also demonstrate that people's level of diversity seeking is related to past, present, and intended diversity-related consumption behaviors. The authors suggest directions for further research regarding application of the scale to leverage the benefits of a multicultural marketplace for social marketing, public policy, and transformative consumer research efforts.</p>