Developing and Validating a Measure of Consumer Well-Being in Relation to Cell Phone Use

This paper reports on an effort to develop a consumer well-being measure in relation to cell phone use. The measure is based on the theoretical notion that the perception of the overall quality-of-life impact of the cell phone on users is determined by their perceptions of the impact of the cell phone in various life domains such as social life, leisure life, family life, education life, health and safety, love life, work life, and financial life. In turn, the perception of impact of the cell phone in a given life domain (e.g., social life, leisure life) is determined by perceptions of benefits and costs of the cell phone within that domain. We conducted two major studies to select items capturing perceived benefits and costs that are predictive of perceived quality-of-life impact of the cell phone.