The use of a proposed modified model of planned behavior to predict the beef consumption of young adult college students

Date

2004-12

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Publisher

Texas Tech University

Abstract

The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) served as the theoretical framework for this study. This study focused on the development and analysis of a proposed Modified Model of Planned Behavior (MMpB) to investigate the beef consumption habits of young adult college students. The proposed model incorporated theoretical interactions of other models which also find their beginnings based on the TRA. The constructs of the proposed model merged the constructs of the TRA (beliefs, attitude, referent others, subjective norm, intentions and behavior) with the added constructs of Sapp's (1991) Expanded Rational Expectations Model (knowledge and social acceptability) and Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior (control beliefs and perceived behavioral control). The participants of this study were a self-selected convenience sample of young adult college students from a major southeastern and southwestern university. A self-report questionnaire was administered to (N = 914) students in classrooms at both universities. The proposed model's abilities were measured using structural equation modeling, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis. The results of the study indicated that the proposed MMpB was able to explain a substantial amount of the variance in the intention and behavior constructs, but failed to provide an adequate overall goodness-of-fit to the data. The results of the cluster analysis revealed three distinct cluster groupings based primarily on the behavior construct. Low, medium, and high beef consumption clusters were identified using cluster analysis and verified using discriminant analysis.

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