12 Reasons Why People Resist Change: Development of the Reasons for Resistance to Change Scale (RRCS)

Resistance to behavior change is a well-established phenomenon across research domains and a central concern for scholars and practitioners. While prior research identified reasons for resisting change, no reliable measure to assess situational reasons for resistance exists. To address this gap, we developed the Reasons for Resistance to Change Scale (RRCS). Drawing on academic literature and qualitative input from practitioners and academics, we generated items and examined and tested the factor structure of the RRCS in three independent samples (N = 2341). The RRCS identifies 12 reasons for resisting behavior change and enables researchers to examine and understand situational sources of resistance and to investigate appropriate responses in different change situations, advancing both theory and practice in behavior change research.