ABSTRACT
Action theory regards people as decision-makers who follow intentions and voluntarily pursue their goals (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). According to this theory, people may be affected by environmental and inner pressures and affordances, but ultimately behavior is guided by reflective, higher-order cognitive processes (Smith & DeCoster, 2000; Westerick, Renckstorf, Lammers, & Wester, 2006). People’s higher-order cognitive processing responds to immediate “forces” such as internal drives or external pressures, but is not considered to be fully determined by them. Accordingly, action theory underlines the capability of people to cognitively ponder their environment and to run projections regarding various outcomes before they choose an option and undertake an action. A full explanation of media choice from the perspective of action theory involves the following four components: (1) it stresses users’ decision-making (Frisch & Clemen, 1994; Marewski, Galesic, & Gigerenzer, this volume), which may include a likelihood-estimation and evaluation of possible rewards and costs (c.f., Eccles & Wigfield, 2002); (2) it highlights the way in which intentions are developed within the decision process; (3) it explicates how an intention is eventually implemented and shielded against competing action plans (Gollwitzer, 1990; Heckhausen & Beckmann, 1990); and (4) it thus tells how intentions result in actual behavior (Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005). A specific theoretical framework, which originated in social psychology and strongly builds on action-theoretical ideas, is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TOPB; Ajzen, 1988, 1991; see Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005, for an excellent summary; see for reviews, Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger, Chatzisarantis, & Biddle, 2002; Conner & Armitage, 1998; Sutton, 1998). TOPB can be understood as an extension of its precursor, the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; for a comparison of TRA and TOPB, see Madden, Ellen, & Ajzen, 1992). The scope of TOPB is-as already suggested by the labels “planned behavior” and “reasoned action”—predicting and explaining human behavior that is based on motivational choices and intentions. This chapter discusses an application of TOPB to media choice. The first
section introduces the theory, defines the core scope of the theory, and discusses the potential boundaries of the scope. The second section reviews existing applications of TOPB to the realm of media choice, and the third section concludes the chapter with a review of the potential of TOPB to inspire research on media choice via discussing initial steps towards a theory of planned media choice.
