Future‐oriented emotions in the prediction of binge‐drinking intention and expectation: the role of anticipated and anticipatory emotions

Abstract

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) offers a parsimonious explanation of purposive behavior, but in the study of healthy and risk behaviors its sufficiency may be questioned. Working with binge-drinking, a very common risk behavior in Spanish undergraduate students, we used two strategies for improving predictions from TPB: using behavioral intention (BI) and behavioral expectation (BE) as proximal antecedents of behaviors and adding as new predictors two future-oriented emotions (anticipated and anticipatory). Hierarchical regression analyses show that while anticipated emotions improved TPB explanations of BI, anticipatory emotions improved the explanations of BE. The present results show the influence of future emotions in the prediction of behavioral intention and behavioral expectation.