A significant number of research have demonstrated that the relations between attitude and behaviour are varied and fundamentally complex. Historically, consumers’ attitudes were
assumed to be consistent with their behaviours (Armitage and Christian, 2003). In 1934,
Lapiere conducted a research to test the attitude-behaviour relationship. At that time, there
was a strong prejudice towards the ethnic Chinese in the United States. LaPiere travelled
through the United States with a young Chinese couple. They visited 251 restaurants, cafes,
hotels and motels but were refused service only once. The attention and care that they received were quite positive. The owners’ behaviour showed that they had a positive attitude
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establishments that they had visited to ask if they would accept members of the Chinese race
as guests in their establishments. Surprisingly, 92 per cent of the restaurants and 91 per cent
of the hotels/motels said they would refuse Chinese customers. LaPiere (1934) believed that the restaurants and hotel or motel managers’ attitude towards Chinese customers are
consistent with their responses to the Chinese couple who asked for service previously. LaPiere (1934) concluded that there is a gap between attitudes and behaviour. LaPiere’s
(1934) work was criticized by many researchers. The main critique was related to the
employed methodology of the research. The people who filled out the questionnaires may not
be the same as the people who allowed the Chinese couple to the establishments (Semin and
Fiedler, 1996). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) stated that LaPierre (1934) tried to predict specific
behaviour from general attitudes towards Chinese guests rather than specific attitudes
towards the Chinese couple.
Corey (1937) conducted research to examine the attitude-behaviour gap. He assessed students’ attitudes towards cheating and their cheating behaviour. The finding of the study
revealed that there is no correlation between attitude and behaviour, which indicated that
students who had negative attitude towards cheating were as likely to cheat as those who had
positive attitudes. Wicker (1969) discovered that the correlation between attitude and
behaviour barely exceeded 0.30 and were often close to zero. Wicker (1969) concluded that
there was "little evidence to support the postulated existence of stable, underlying attitudes
within the individual, which influence both his verbal expressions and his action" (p. 75). Wicker’s (1971) suggestion to abandon the attitude concept lead to a crisis in confidence in
the attitude concept in general and in the attitude-behaviour relationship in the early to mid-
1970s (Semin and Fiedler, 1996). A number of social psychologists continued this line of
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attitude and behaviour. Baron and Kenny (1986) believed a moderator variable can "partition
a focal independent variable into subgroups that establish its domains of maximal
effectiveness in regard to a given dependent variable", while a "mediator" can "represent the
generative mechanism through which the focal independent variable is able to influence the
dependent variable of interest" (p. 1173). The attitude behaviour relationship was transformed
by Ajzen (1988, p. 41) who stated that "people were found neither to behave consistently
across situations, nor to act in accordance with their measured attitudes." Ajzen affirmed that
"social psychologists lost faith in the attitude concepts, and concluded that only a very small
proportion of behavioural variance could be explained by reference to the dispositions"
(Ajzen, 1988, p. 42).
Based on the above-mentioned literature, attitude strength and the measurement
correspondence were considered as moderators between attitude and behaviour. Many studies
evidenced that stronger attitudes are more predictive of behaviour than weak attitudes (e.g.,
Sanderson, 2009). Attitudes are more predictive of related behaviour when they are univalent
(e.g., Conner & Sparks, 2002), accessible in memory (e.g., Kokkinaki and Lunt, 1998), or are
personally involving (e.g., Thomsen et al., 1995). Moreover, the relatively stable intentions
and perceptions of behavioural control are better predictors of related behaviour (e.g., Conner
et al., 2000). The chosen measurement technique plays an important role in influencing the
relationship between attitudes and behaviour. The correlation between attitude and behaviour
lower when general attitudes are used to predict specific behaviours (Fishbein and Ajzen,
1975). Measures of attitude and behaviour should match the action conducted at a specific
target, the context and the time where the action is performed (e.g., Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975;
Kraus, 1995). Moreover, when individuals respond to the items on a question, they may be
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and attitudes (Nederhof, 1985). This type of response bias result in a discrepancy between
attitude and behaviour.
Many studies have evidenced the influencing role of intention between attitude and behaviour.
Intention, rather than attitude, is considered the principal determinants of behaviour.
Therefore, intention mediates the attitude-behaviour relationship (Sheeran, 2002). Individuals
who have intentions often fail to act on them (Orbell and Sheeran, 1998). The implementation
of intention or planning mediates the relationship between intention and behaviour (e.g.,
Scholz et al., 2008; Wiedemann et al., 2009; Van Osch et al., 2010; Hassan et al., 2014).
Furthermore, a number of social psychologists have demonstrated that some variables can
either moderate or mediate the relationship between attitude and behaviour (e.g. Schultz and
Oskamp, 1996; Conner et al., 2002). Baron and Kenny (1986) believed a moderator variable
would "partition a focal independent variable into subgroups that establish its domains of
maximal effectiveness in regard to a given dependent variable" (p. 1173). For instance, the
role of self-efficacy and perceived behaviour control between the attitude, intention and
behaviour has been evidenced in various studies (Bandura, 1986; Terry and O'Leary, 1995;
Rhodes and Courneya, 2003; De Vreese, 2004, 2005; Cherry, 2006).