A Theory of Planned Behavior Study of College Students' Intention to Register as Organ Donors in Japan, Korea, and the United States

Abstract

This study investigated willingness of Americans, Koreans, and Japanese to register as organ donors using the theory of planned behavior. Although previous research showed that attitude toward donation and communication with family predicted organ donation behaviors for respondents in the United States, these variables were also significant for respondents in Japan and Korea. Perceived behavioral control predicted intention to register for Japanese participants whereas knowledge about organ donation was associated with reluctance to register for Koreans. Spiritual connection and concern were shown to be causal factors underlying attitude in all 3 countries. In spite of positive attitudes toward organ donation and comparable knowledge with Americans and Japanese, most Korean participants declined to take an application to register as a donor. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.

Notes

¹The dependent variable was whether or not a participant took the donor registration packet at the end of the survey. Ideally, participants should have been contacted later to see if they actually registered. However, this was not possible in the two foreign research sites. This raises the issue of inability to falsify cognitive models such as the TRB (Ogden, 2003).

²Correlations among all the factors by country are available from the first author.

Bresnahan, M. J., Lee, S. Y., Smith, S. W., Shearman, S. M., & Yoo, J. (2006, in press). Reservations of the spirit: The development of a spiritual beliefs scale and its relationship to willingness to become an organ donor in Japan, Korea, and the United States. Health Communication.

Hunter, J. E., & Hamilton, M. A. (Unpublished manuscript). A least squares static path analysis program.