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This study investigates the relationship between attitudes toward a behavior and subjective norms in the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Unique to this research, attitudes toward a behavior are divided into social and personal attitudes in order to test an explanation for the moderate to high correlation between attitudes and subjective norms reported in previous research. As expected, only social attitudes toward a behavior are significantly related to subjective norms. The finding indicates that the overlap between attitudes and subjective norms in TRA research occurs when the attitudes studied are social in nature. Additionally, members ofa collectivistic culture tend to score higher on subjective norms and social attitudes, but the high score on subjective norms and social attitudes does not necessarily contribute to predicting behavioral intention. It is suggested that cross-cultural differences on the absolute strengths of attitudes and subjective norms may not translate to the differences in the relative weights of the two components in predicting behavioral intention.
According to the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), people intend to behave in ways that allow them to obtain favorable outcomes and meet the expectations of others (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). TRA has generated a great amount of research explaining and predicting a wide variety of behaviors in many contexts. More recent studies tend to focus more on socially-relevant behaviors such as AIDS-related sexual behaviors (e.g., Fishbein, Chan, O'Reilly, Schnell, & Wood, 1992), condom uses (e.g., Baker, Morrison, Carter, & Verson, 1996; Diaz-Loving & Villagran-Vazquez, 1999), continuing professional education (e.g., Becker & Gibson, 1998), and recycling (e.g., Park, Levine, & Sharkey, 1998), just to name a few.
Literature reviews on TRA have concluded that empirical studies have generally been supportive of the theory. For example, Ryan and Bonfield (1975) reviewed 10 studies in a marketing context and reported that the average multiple correlation of attitudes and subjective norms on behavioral intentions was .60. They concluded, "the model yields stable predictions" (p. 125). In several reviews of empirical studies, Fishbein and Ajzen maintained that intentions to engage in volitional acts were usually well predicted by the combination of attitudes toward a behavior and subjective norms (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1973, 1980; Fishbein, 1980). Indeed, Ajzen and Fishbein (1973) provided a detailed review of 10 empirical tests of...