Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence.

By Thomas Llewelyn Webb, P. Sheeran. Psychological bulletin, 2006

3,715 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fb59bc130ba009194610c16a2beb172bd218e70c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Psychology

1. Benjamin Gardner
2. Martin S. Hagger
3. I. Ajzen
4. Phillippa Lally
5. Wendy Wood
6. P. Sheeran
7. Peter M. Gollwitzer
8. Thomas Llewelyn Webb

In Clinical Psychology

1. Benjamin Gardner
2. Phillippa Lally
3. Wendy Wood
4. Peter M. Gollwitzer
5. Martin S. Hagger
6. Arnold B. Bakker
7. P. Sheeran
8. Falko Sniehotta

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Benjamin Gardner
2. Peter M. Gollwitzer
3. Martin S. Hagger
4. Phillippa Lally
5. P. Sheeran
6. Wendy Wood
7. I. Ajzen
8. Thomas Llewelyn Webb

Citations in the corpus

• Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits (2006, background): “In this quadrant, there are many downstream strategies that have proved effective in changing nonhabitual behaviors (e.g., Perry et al. 1996, 2002; Webb and Sheeran 2006 ) and in generating short-term change in ongoing behaviors (e.g., Orleans 2000).”
• Changing College Students’ Financial Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior through Seminar Participation (2008, background): “Employment status may influence financial attitudes and behaviors (Xiao et al. 2006).”
• Exploring Beliefs About Bottled Water and Intentions to Reduce Consumption The Dual-Effect of Social Norm Activation and Persuasive Information (2015, background): “While the gap between intention and behavior is acknowledged, meta-reviews of experimental studies generally report that changes in intention do engender behavioral change (e.g., Webb & Sheeran, 2006).”
• Facilitating Savings for Agriculture: Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi (2015, neutral): “This mere elicitation of farmers’ intentions may have influenced their later behavior ðFeldman and Lynch 1988; Webb and Sheeran 2006; Zwane et al. 2011Þ. Relatedly, the act of signing up for direct deposit into savings accounts may have created an “agricultural input” mental account for the…”
• Increasing organic food consumption: An integrating model of drivers and barriers (2020, background): “The strong relation between intentions and behaviors assumed by the TPB has been repeatedly validated empirically (Ajzen, 1991, 2012; Webb and Sheeran, 2006), but there still remains what is known as an intentionebehavior gap, which researchers and those concerned with interventions aiming at behavi”
• Temporal self-regulation theory: A model for individual health behavior (2007, background): “In a recent metaanalysis, Webb and Sheeran (2006) reviewed experimental studies examining the intention-behavior link and found that medium-to-large increases in behavioral intention induce only small-to-medium changes in behavior.”
• Job crafting and job performance: A longitudinal study (2015, background): “Implementation intentions may increase the stability of the intention and make it more likely that intentions are translated into behaviours (Webb & Sheeran, 2006).”
• What Factors Predict Scientists' Intentions to Participate in Public Engagement of Science Activities? (2007, background): “Recent experimental evidence suggests that modifying intention in this way can have a positive, albeit relatively small, effect on behavior (Webb & Sheeran, 2006), but also that the effects of motivational interventions on behavior might be strengthened by inclusion of incentives for behaving or…”
• The role of fear appeals in improving driver safety: A review of the effectiveness of fear-arousing (threat) appeals in road safety advertising. (2007, background): “Indeed, recent meta-analytical research has indicated that a medium to large intentional change (d = 0.66) leads to a small-to-medium behavioural change (d = 0.36) (Webb & Sheeran, 2006).”