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ABSTRACT
Research examining shopping addiction has been impeded by the controversies regarding its etiology, prevalent estimates, the clinical course, and treatment protocol. This hindrance has led to the development of different psychometric instruments to assess problematic shopping behavior in general and ones that evaluate the online version of shopping addiction in particular. One such scale is the eighteen-item Online Shopping Addiction Scale (OSAS) based on the general addiction model. Although the OSAS has been developed since 2017, it has not been validated thoughtfully. Therefore, the present study sought to evaluate the psychometric properties of OSAS using a Taiwanese sample. Data collected from 350 internet shoppers were subjected to a factor analysis to assess the psychometric characteristics and factorial structure of the scale. Extracted dimensions were then correlated with several demographic and Internet shopping criteria. Results from the current study support the three-factor structure for the 15-item version of the OSAS. The new adaptation of the OSAS was found reliable and showed adequate convergent and criterion-related validity. Furthermore, multi-group CFAs revealed evidence of measurement invariance for configural, metric, and scalar models across gender, suggesting that men and women interpreted OSAS 15-items in a similar manner. These findings support the OSAS as a valid and reliable tool for determining the level of online shopping addiction among the Taiwanese student population.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge all anonymous participants for their help with data collection and the insightful feedback of the anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure Statement
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.