Cultural exploration as an antecedent of students’ intention to attend university events: an extension of the theory of reasoned action

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of university events in students’ lives and experiences, little research has been devoted to understand the behavioral intentions of university students to attend such extra-curricular activities. This study, therefore, examined the behavioral intentions of university students to attend university events. The study successfully extended the theory of reasoned action (TRA) through incorporating a new variable cultural exploration, as a proposed predictor of students’ behavioral intentions. An online survey was conducted with students in a number of southeastern US public universities. Results of the structural model analysis revealed that attitudes, subjective norms, and cultural exploration have a significant positive impact on the university students’ behavioral intention to attend university events. Moreover, attitude was found to mediate the effect of cultural exploration and subjective norms on students’ behavioral intention. Findings proved that the extended TRA (ETRA) is influential in predicting students’ behavioral intentions to attend university events. Practical and theoretical implications of this study, and future research directions, are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• University events
• students
• cultural exploration
• extra-curricular activities
• theory of reasoned action
• behavioral intentions

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