Stereotyping Effects on Cities: Measurement Scales for City's Warmth and Competence
Stereotyping Effects on Cities: Measurement Scales for City's Warmth and Competence

Summary/Abstract: In the endeavor of analyzing urban development perspectives, the currentpaper aims to find out how warmth and competence stereotypes would operate in thecase of a city, predicting its future, as a direct consequence of people's positive ornegative feelings and actions. Results of such analyses would be of strategicimportance, knowing that various aspects of urban development (from tourism tobusiness, well-being, active population growth and talents retention) depend onpeople’s decisions to visit that city, to invest, to work, to study, to settle down there, orto simply spread positive opinions about it. Therefore, relying on the well-known SCM- stereotype content model, the paper adapts previous warmth and competence scales,and develops a customized research instrument for analyzing connections betweenpeople's perceptions and the mental labels attached to a specific city. Consideringwarmth and competence dimensions, as well as the other variables of interest such asstatus, cooperation and competition, we use an exploratory procedure for itemselection followed by a Q-sorting analysis for scale content validation. The paper addsto the literature in two main ways. It firstly advances an integrative view thatconnects the theories from social psychology, communication and branding withthose from urban development. Secondly, it offers a content validated measurementinstrument, as a necessary departure point for future analyses meant to identifychallenges and to predict the potential for development of smart and sustainablecities.

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