Toward a Scale to Measure How Food Businesses Attain and Maintain Legitimacy

This study advances knowledge about strategies new food businesses can use to achieve legitimacy by continuing the scale development work of Johnson et al. (2018). We test, extend, and validate an instrument used to measure food/Agribusiness legitimacy. A principal component analysis of data from a 50-item questionnaire instrument administered to food businesses that have worked with a land-grant university food processing center revealed an underlying nine-component structure which contributed to about 80% of the explained variance in the pattern of relationships among questionnaire items, differing from previous studies. We discuss these differences and make recommendations to refine the scale.