The knowledge-to-intention gap for information ethics within university students: Investigating the factors of the theory of planned behavior

Abstract

Two experiments that utilized knowledge and intention tasks were conducted to investigate the knowledge-to-intention gap within university students. The knowledge task asked about appropriate behaviors in terms of general knowledge, while the intention task asked about the actions that the participants themselves would select. Irrespective of whether already possessing relevant knowledge, the participants of both experiments were presented with unethical behaviors. In Experiment 1, the proportions of participants who maintained ethical behaviors within both tasks were higher than the proportions of high-school students. Experiment 2 also investigated the three factors of the theory of planned behavior; namely, attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC). The results indicated that, irrespective of factor, positively evaluated behaviors were selected when complying in the intention task. However, the results varied according to factor, when unethical behaviors were selected. More specifically, with respect to ATT, compliant behaviors were evaluated positively while noncompliant behaviors were evaluated negatively, but the results were reversed with regard to PBC. No significant differences related to SNs were observed for ethical and unethical behaviors.