Latitude of rejection, centrality and certainty: Variables affecting the relationship between attitudes, norms and behavioural intentions

Abstract

Fishbein's theory of the attitude–behaviour relationship provides no methodology for measuring the importance of each of the model's components for any given individual. The present paper extends the concepts of latitude of rejection, centrality and certainty (as measures of the individual's involvement with the attitudinal act) so that they can be applied to both the attitudinal and normative terms in Fishbein's model. In a questionnaire study with student subjects, using social drinking as a target behaviour, it is shown that these moderator variables are uncorrelated and that they moderate the degree of consistency which exists between a subject's attitudes, norms and his expressed intentions.