Discrepancies in exercise intention and expectation: theoretical and applied issues

Abstract

Intention measures often assess behavioral expectation more than behavioral intention. Warshaw and Davis (1985) theorize that expectation takes anticipated fluctuations in the commitment to the intention and perceived behavioral control (PBC) interactions into consideration over intention. Some researches have provided indirect evidence for this theorizing, but no study had directly tested this proposition. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to examine potential moderators of intention and expectation relations in the exercise domain. The participants were 241 undergraduate students who completed measures of intention, expectation, commitment to their intentions, the theory of planned behavior (affective attitude, instrumental attitude, subjective norm, PBC) and a two-week follow-up of behavior. The results showed that commitment to the intention and PBC moderated the relationship between intention and expectation (p<0.01). Specifically, those individuals with low intention commitment and low PBC had lower exercise expectations than intentions (d > 0.19) and larger expectation–behavior correlations than intention–behavior correlations (q > 0.09). In contrast, those individuals with medium and high levels of intention commitment and PBC had expectations equal to their intentions and no difference between the expectation–behavior and intention–behavior correlations. Based on these results and the results of previous studies, we recommend that differences between intention and expectation items be taken into account in the future, particularly in those individuals with low intention commitment and PBC.

Keywords:

• Intention commitment
• Perceived behavioral control
• Theory of planned behavior
• Exercise prescription

Acknowledgements

Ryan E. Rhodes is supported by a scholar award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and with funds from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge and Development Fund, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Deborah Hunt Matheson is supported with funds from internal grants from Malaspina University-College. We also wish to acknowledge the hard work of data collection and data entry by Kathi Cameron.