Reframing the Attitude-Behavior Debate: The Case of the Meat-Abstinence in Vegetarian Student Cooperatives

· Universal-Publishers
Ebook
130
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

This thesis proposes a reconceptualization of the "attitude" as a multidimensional latent process, which may be unstable across situations, individuals, and time. A review of the literature in light of this reconceptualization reveals aspects of the survey situation that may systematically influence measures of attitudes, behaviors, and social norms. This suggests that contradictory findings regarding attitude-behavior consistency may be partly due to specific inadequacies of conventional measures. A reflexive research strategy is proposed, which supplements survey methods with both quantitative and qualitative assessments of measurement validity.

This strategy is applied in a case study of attitudes, norms, and diet in five vegetarian student cooperative houses. Analyses test the sufficiency of a revised Model of Reasoned Action for predicting members' intentions to abstain from eating beef, chicken, or fish. Throughout the analyses, several methodological issues are explored in an effort to optimize validity: elicitation and fixed response items, generality of referents and expected consequences, subjective and objective measures of social norms, allowance for composite behavioral intentions, and specification of regression models. Implications for future theoretical research and the design of reflexive behavioral interventions are discussed.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.