Erik Lindberg, Tommy Giirling, and Henry Montgomery Belief-Value Structures as Determinants of Consumer Behaviour: A Study of Housing Preferences and Choices ABSTRACT. The role of consumers' belief-value structures was investigated in the context of residential preferences and simulated residential choices by means of'a questionnaire answered by 36 adult Swedish respondents. Three models with different assumptions concerning how beliefs about the attainment of life values affect consumer behaviour were used for predicting preferences for and choices among hypothetical housing alternatives. A model assuming that the evaluation of a given alternative is determined by a weighted sum of the evaluations of the life values which it is believed to lead to, without specifying how individual attributes contribute to this value-fulfillment, was found to be the most successful one in predicting both preference ratings and choices. The results further suggested that whereas the age of the respondents and the format of the information about attributes may have an effect on belief-value structures, the ability to use such structures in order to predict preferences and choices may not be much affected by these factors. The present approach was compared with the laddering technique, and it was suggested that the two methods may be fruitfully combined in the study of consumer attitudes and behaviour. In recent years, investigators in the area of consumer research have become increasingly interested in the study of consumers' cognitive structures as a means of developing a useful understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviour (e.g., Gutman, 1984; Olson & Reynolds, 1983). One way in which such cognitive structures could be conceptualized is suggested by the expectancy-value model which has been widely used in the study of motivation, attitudes, and actions (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Atkinson & Birch, 1970, 1974; Feather, 1982). According to this model, a consumer's attitude and behaviour with respect to a particular product or brand would be largely determined by his/her beliefs about what the consequences of purchasing the product would be and by his/her evaluation of those consequences. Expectancy-value formulations of attitudes have however been criticized on the ground that the evaluative aspect is itself an attitude Journal of Consumer Policy 12:119--137, 1989. © 1989 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.