Discrepancies in exercise intention and expectation: Theoretical and applied issues

Intention measures often assess behavioral expectation more than behavioral intention. Warshaw and Davis (1985) theorize that expectation takes anticipated fluctuations in the commitment to the intention and perceived behavioral control (PBC) interactions into consideration over intention. Some researches have provided indirect evidence for this theorizing, but no study had directly tested this proposition. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to examine potential moderators of intention and expectation relations in the exercise domain. The participants were 241 undergraduate students who completed measures of intention, expectation, commitment to their intentions, the theory of planned behavior (affective attitude, instrumental attitude, subjective norm, PBC) and a two-week follow-up of behavior. The results showed that commitment to the intention and PBC moderated the relationship between intention and expectation (p<0.01). Specifically, those individuals with low intention commitment and low PBC had lower exercise expectations than intentions (d > 0.19) and larger expectation-behavior correlations than intention-behavior correlations (q > 0.09). In contrast, those individuals with medium and high levels of intention commitment and PBC had expectations equal to their intentions and no difference between the expectation-behavior and intention-behavior correlations. Based on these results and the results of previous studies, we recommend that differences between intention and expectation items be taken into account in the future, particularly in those individuals with low intention commitment and PBC.