Psychological Bulletin 1977, Vol. 84, No. 5, 8-918 Attitude-Behavior Relations: A Theoretical Analysis and Review of Empirical Research Icek Ajzen University of Massachusetts—Amherst Martin Fishbein University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Research on the relation between attitude and behavior is examined in light of the correspondence between attitudinal and behavioral entities. Such entities are defined by their target, action, context, and time elements. A review of available empirical research supports the contention that strong attitude-behavior relations dre obtained only under high correspondence between at least the target and action elements of the attitudinal and behavioral entities. This conclusion is compared with the rather pessimistic assessment of the utility of the attitude concept found in much contemporary social psychological literature. Reports of rather low or nonsignificant relations between attitudinal predictors and behavioral criteria have been accumulating for more than 40 years (cf. Wicker, 1969). These negative findings led many investiga- tors to reconsider the nature of the attitude- behavior relation (e.g., Calder & Ross, 1973; D. T. Campbell, 1963; DeFleur & Westie, 1958, 1963; Deutscher, 1966, 1969, 1973; Ehrlich, 1969; Kelman, 1974; Rokeach, 1967; Tittle & Hill, 1967). In a parallel de- velopment, it was possible to discern a grow- ing disenchantment with the attitude concept, and the general consensus was that measures of attitude have little value for the predic- tion of overt behavior. Recently, however, social psychology has been witnessing a revival of interest in the relationship between attitude and action (e.g., Brannon, 1976; Liska, 1975; D. J. Schneider, 1976; Schuman & Johnson, 1976). The emerging position seems to be that atti- tude is only one of many factors determining behavior. Although this position reaffirms the importance of attitudes, it leads to the expec- tation that attitudes will often be unrelated to behavior. In a number of publications we have pre- sented ideas and data that are clearly at variance with this assessment of the attitude Requests for reprints should be sent to Icek Ajzen, Department of Psychology, University of Massa- chusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003. concept and its utility (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1973; Fishbein, 1967, 1973; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1972, 1974, 1975). We have argued that a person's attitude toward an object in- fluences the overall pattern of his responses to the object, but that it need not predict any given action. According to this analysis, a single behavior is determined by the inten- tion to perform the behavior in question. A person's intention is in turn a function of his attitude toward performing the behavior and of his subjective norm. It follows that a single act is predictable from the attitude toward that act, provided that there is a high corre- lation between intention and behavior. 1 These arguments can be incorporated with- in a more general framework that focuses on the question of correspondence between mea- sures of attitude and behavior. The purpose of the present article is to reexamine the attitude-behavior relationship. A theoretical analysis of the correspondence between atti- tudinal predictors and behavioral criteria is followed by a review of pertinent empirical research. It is shown that people's actions are found to be systematically related to their attitudes when the nature of the attitudinal predictors and behavioral criteria are taken into consideration. 1 Even when the intention is primarily under the control of normative considerations, its correlation with attitude toward the action is usually found to be quite high. 888