Should past experience be ignored? An insight from the decomposed theory of planned behavior

Abstract

Purpose: The contribution of the Past behaviour construct to the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior has been controversial. The aim of this paper is to review the Past behaviour construct to identify how an individual’s past experience may influence their intentions to behave in a certain manner as predicted by the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: This study will comprehensively review important articles on DTPB literature, with a particular focus on past experience and the contribution of past experience in the accuracy of predicting intention and behaviour.Findings: The conclusions from other researchers have tended to be divided into two camps, with one side claiming that past experience is an inherent component of the theory, and claiming that there is a problem with the research constructs if the past behaviour construct is needed, while the other camp stated that the past behaviour construct is required if the theory’s predictive power is to be increased. Research limitations/implications: This is a review of literature involved with this theory and as such a purpose built research to test the conclusions of this paper is advised. Practical implications: The significance of this paper is that it covers the literature that is controversial in nature and catalogues what research previous authors have employed the past experience construct in DTPB.Originality/value: This paper is of interest to scholars reviewing the various behavioural intention theories in general and contributes to clarifying the contribution of the Past behaviour construct to researchers doing research using the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour in particular.