Intention – Behaviour Relations: A Conceptual and Literature Review

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) are commonly-used theories in the studies related to intention and behaviour. TRA considers attitude and subjective norms as its components, while TPB, an extension version of TRA added a new component namely perceived behavioural control to the original theory. TRA and TPB have been widely used to predict behavioural intention. This paper aims to give an extensive review of literatures using TRA and TPB in predicting the behavioural intention particularly in the services offered by financial institutions and financial markets. Among of the services offered by the financial institutions are financing, credit cards, internet banking and insurance. While the services offered by the financial markets are investment and internet trading in shares and also investment in mutual funds. Overall, the result shows that attitude is one of the most influential factors in determining behavioural intention. The validity of TPB has yet to be proven in the area of Islamic investment, particularly the unit trust funds, thus another objective of this paper is to propose a simple theoretical framework that initiate investors’ to invest in Islamic unit trust funds in Malaysia. Keywords: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, intention