Relationships between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and the intention to use motorcycling safety helmets in university students of the lower northeast area of Thailand
Abstract:
The purposes of this study were to examine the relationships between attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and the intention to use motorcycling safety helmets of university students of the lower northeastern area of Thailand. The subjects were 440 university students in four provinces of the lower northeastern area of Thailand and sites in Nakhon Ratchasima, Surin, Sri Sa Ket, and Ubon Ratchathani Provinces. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed to recruit the study sample. The instruments were demographic data from, attitudes toward motorcycling safety helmets questionnaire, subjective norms questionnaire, perceived behavioral control questionnaire, and intention to use motorcycling safety helmets questionnaire. All questionnaires were tested for content validity by a panel of five experts. The Cronbachs alpha coefficients of all questionnaires of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were .90, .83, and .60, respectively. Pearsons product moment correlation and multiple regression were also used in statistical analysis. The results were as follows: 1. The mean score of attitudes toward motorcycling safety helmets was at a medium level ( = 171.53, SD = 43.85). In addition, the mean score of subjective norms was at a high level ( = 108.77, SD = 26.28), and the mean score of perceived behavioral control was at a medium level ( = 157.11, SD = 39.34). Finally, the mean score of intention to use motorcycling safety helmets was at a high level ( = 4.27, SD = .68). 2. There were statistically significantly positive relationships among attitudes toward motorcycling safety helmets, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intention to use motorcycling safety helmets of university students at the level of .01 ( r = .147, .207, and .216, respectively). 3. Attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control toward significantly predicted university students intention to use motorcycling safety helmets at the level of .05. The predictive power was 6% of the variance. While attitudes could not predict university students intention to use motorcycling safety helmets at the level of .05 (Beta= .04). The equation derived from the standardized score was: University students intention to use motorcycling safety helmets = .04A + .12 SN + .14PBC