reliability can be achieved if the composite reliability (CR) for each construct is greater
than the minimum recommended value of 0.60 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). In terms of
convergent validity, the average variance extracted (AVE) should be greater than 0.50
for each construct (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). All the CR and AVE values for each first- and
second-order construct exceeded the minimum threshold values, as shown in Table II.
Finally, the discriminant validity of all the five latent factors was assessed through the
process proposed by Fornell and Larcker (1981). According to these authors, in order to
confirm the discriminant validity of the model it is necessary that the square root of
each AVE be greater than the highest correlation between that construct and any other
variable in the model. Table III shows how the discriminant validity is achieved in the
model presented in this paper.