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Four studies were performed to test whether Ajzen's (1988, 1991) concept of perceived behavioural control is really an amalgamation of two variables, which we term 'perceived control' and 'perceived difficulty'. Perceived control refers to the extent to which people consider the performance of a behaviour to be under their voluntary control. Perceived difficulty refers to whether people consider a behaviour to be easy or difficult to perform, Findings from Studies 1 to 4 demonstrate that it is possible to perform manipulations that affect perceived control more than perceived difficulty, or that affect perceived difficulty more than perceived control. Studies 2-4 used a variety of paradigms to show that people distinguish between beliefs that are presumed to underlie perceived control and perceived difficulty. Finally, we performed a meta-analysis in Study 5 to determine whether perceived control or perceived difficulty is more important for predicting behavioural intentions and behaviours. Taken together, the findings support the distinction between perceived control and perceived difficulty, and also suggest that perceived difficulty is a better predictor of most behavioural intentions and behaviours than is perceived control.
The most influential theory for understanding and predicting behaviour in the last few decades has been Fishbein's theory of reasoned action (1963, 1967, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). According to this theory, the proximal determinant of behaviour is behavioural intention-people do what they intend to do and not what they intend not to do. Behavioural intention, in turn, is determined by attitude and subjective norm, which refer to an evaluation of the behaviour and a person's opinion about what 'most others who are important' to him or her think he or she should do, respectively. Attitude and subjective norm are a function of behavioural and normative beliefs, respectively. Behavioural beliefs are beliefs about the likelihood of various consequences of the behaviour and normative beliefs are beliefs about what specific normative referents (e.g. one's mother) think one should do. According to the theory of reasoned action, attitude is the sum of the products of each belief about the likelihood of a consequence multiplied by its evaluation (how 'good' or 'bad' the consequence is). Subjective norm is the sum of the products of each normative belief about what a particular normative referent thinks the person should...