Intention-Behaviour Gap

What it is

Theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour treat intention as the step that sits between a person's attitude and their behaviour. If that step were complete, a stated intention would predict the action. The gap names the cases where it does not.

Louise Hassan, Edward Shiu and Deirdre Shaw took the gap in ethical consumption as the subject of a 2016 paper in the Journal of Business Ethics. They note that researchers had often pointed to such a gap, and that its size and its drivers had not been studied systematically.

The article on what a sustainable branding agency does applies the paper to green claims. It treats environmentally motivated buying as one kind of ethical buying, which is an assumption of that article and not a statement made in the paper.

In effect

The paper has two parts. The first is a review of studies of ethical consumption that were built on the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour and that measured both intention and behaviour. The authors found that few studies did both, so the evidence is limited for putting an accurate size on the gap.

The second is a case study on ethical clothing buying. It found a large gap between intention and behaviour, and it tested whether planning and actual behavioural control reduce that gap. The authors concluded that longitudinal studies are needed to understand how intention relates to behaviour over time.

For a brand, the practical reading is a caution about survey answers. Stated concern is a place to start and a hypothesis to check against purchase data. That reading is an interpretation of where the research points, and the paper does not make it.

What it does not say

The paper does not give a single figure for the size of the gap in ethical consumption, and it says the evidence is too thin for one. Its case study covers one area of buying, ethical clothing, and does not stand for every product category.

It does not test any branding or messaging approach. Nothing in it shows that a particular claim, label or design narrows the gap.

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