In our research on customer behavior towards online shopping we're using a number of constructs such as perceived behavioral control, perceived efficiency of e-commerce marketplace, sustainable consumption, economic benefits, customer satisfaction level, intention, etc. Any share of evidence or guidance would be extremely appreciated. Thank you.
Dear colleagues, I hope you are all well!
I share what I "learned" from these renowned authors:
The formative constructs must be theoretically grounded before any statistical evaluation. This (theoretical) validation process allows being more assertive about the results.
Please, see these articles:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00500.x
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1509/jmkr.38.2.269.18845
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0148296308000118?token=B702E1084D07146C463804B2C85396C193B8E7F4AADB35CE6FDC2DBB7C3453AB7996F4ADCEF73944E7E6A32459C0B83C
The reflective construct is reflected in the indicators. For this reason, the error is associated with the indicators, which allows eliminating or including indicators without altering the concept of the construction.
However, a formative construct is formed by indicators. For this reason, the error is associated with the constructs and it is not recommended to eliminate or include any indicator under the risk of altering the concept of the constructs.
Please see these articles:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2753/MTP1069-6679190202?needAccess=true
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1441358219301223?token=E884762B9718435A0A1B0D01DD5CBA0393B6507AE40E6E3C0ED1C291DDB7A539A6429AD538219228F04D7D7CF96268C0
I hope it helps!
Reflective are based on mediator indicators, while formative is based on theory, like TRA, TPB, etc.
simply, arrows toward a construct is formative, and arrows towards indicators is reflexive. in formative construct, dimensions are independent and can not be use interchangeably because each dimension measure different aspect of construct. whereas, reflexive dimensions are highly correlated and addition or subtraction of indicators does not affect conceptualization of the construct.
"The direction of relationships and their causality is either in an effect (reflective) or a cause (formative) mode"
Book On the Use of Formative Measurement Specifications in Struct...
Thanks a lot Oliva M. D. Martins, Karen Bayne, Zubair Nawaz, Gonçalo Rodrigues Brás for your valuable contributions.
Reflective measures are caused by the latent construct, whereas, formative measures cause the latent construct. Misspecification exists when a latent construct has reflective (formative) measures when indeed it should be formative (reflective).
The formative construct is an index or composite, removing an item may lead to a wrongful measurement of the whole as each item adds to the overall index (i.e. it forms the whole construct) e.g. for calculating BMI (Body Mass Index), you need both the height and the weight of a person, take out one and you cant calculate BMI.
On the other hand, a reflective construct is one in which removing an item or two will not affect the overall construct as each item is a reflection of the construct i.e. each item essentially points towards the same idea.