The nature and components of perceived behavioural control as an element of theory of planned behaviour

Abstract

Ajzen (1991. The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 50 (2), 179–211) suggested three constructs that determine the user's intention: attitude, subject norms and perceived behavioural control (PBC). Recently, some psychologists have argued that PBC is poorly understood. This study attempted to investigate the nature and components of PBC in research adapting theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to predict the intentions of bank customers with regard to adoption of Internet banking. The findings show some difficulty in discriminating between the presumed internal and external determinants of PBC. This study identifies two determinants: (1) self-efficacy (SE) and (2) facilitating conditions. The latter is broken into three facilitation factors: (1) resources, (2) technology and (3) government support (GS). Interestingly, SE, if considered as an internal factor, exhibits a significance effect on PBC in the presence of the three external factors. This shows that the external factors have a significance effect on PBC when entered for regression analysis without SE. These are valuable findings which show that both components of one's belief in one's level of control (internal factors: SE; external factors: resources, technology and GS) are important. However, which factors have the greatest effect on PBC might be related to the type of innovation or to other factors.