Behavioral Intention Formation: The Interdependency of Attitudinal and Social Influence Variables

Abstract

Fishbein and Ajzen have proposed a theory in which behavioral intention formation is a function of the separable effects of attitude and the social norm. A variable network is deduced from their writings that explicitly models complex variable interdep~ndencies not previously subjected to empirical testing. The findings from an experimental test support a model in which normative variables mediate the effects of both cognitive and normative information on behavioral intentions. Im-plications for the theory's central equations and for information processing in gen-eral are discussed. F ishbein's (1967) model of behavioral intentions has spawned extensive research investigating both the the-ory and its applications in a number of disciplines (see reviews by Ajzen and Fishbein 1973; Farley, Lehmann, and Ryan 1981). A good deal of this research has appeared in the consumer behavior literature, as reviewed by Ryan and Bonfield (1975), and more recent work continues to appea