Where does subjective norm collide?

A person's perception that most people who are important to them think they should or should not perform the behaviour: Fishbein and Ajzen's 1975 subjective norm, the normative half of the theory of reasoned action. It is formed as the product of normative beliefs about what each important referent expects, weighted by the motivation to comply with that referent, and then summed. In Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior they placed it beside attitude toward the behaviour as the second determinant of intention, and Ajzen and Fishbein's 1980 Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior set out the measurement and the expectancy-value composition. This is the parent construct: every later name on this map is the same subjective norm carried into a new model.[1][2]

Unit

A person's belief about what important others expect of the behaviour

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Normative-belief items times motivation to comply, summed across salient referents

The same subjective norm, carried unchanged into Ajzen's 1991 theory of planned behaviour: the perceived social pressure to perform or not perform the behaviour, sitting alongside attitude and the newly added perceived behavioural control as the three determinants of intention. Ajzen kept Fishbein and Ajzen's definition and its normative-belief composition, and what the 1991 theory added was a third predictor next to the norm rather than a change to the norm itself. The construct, its items, and its expectancy-value formula are the reasoned-action subjective norm, relabelled only by the theory that now houses it. In later work the direct measure of perceived pressure was often reported to be the weaker of the two operationalisations.[3]

Unit

A person's belief about what important others expect of the behaviour

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Direct items on perceived social pressure, or normative beliefs weighted by motivation to comply

Subjective norm imported into technology acceptance: Venkatesh and Davis's 2000 TAM2 added Fishbein and Ajzen's construct to the original technology acceptance model as a direct social-influence determinant of intention and, through internalization and identification, of perceived usefulness. They took the construct and its meaning intact from reasoned action, and showed it moved intention directly only when use was mandatory and early in experience, while its effect on usefulness through internalization persisted over time. The addition did not redefine the norm; it placed the reasoned-action subjective norm inside an acceptance model that had until then left social influence out, keeping the same name and the same two-item flavour of the parent scale.[4]

Unit

A user's belief about what important others expect regarding the system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Items on important others' expectations, entered directly and through image and voluntariness

The point where subjective norm loses its name: Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis's 2003 UTAUT pooled subjective norm with social factors and image into a single construct they called social influence, defined as the degree to which a person perceives that important others believe he or she should use the system. The subjective-norm items survive almost word for word inside the pooled scale, but the label of the parent is gone and the reasoned-action theory behind it is replaced by Kelman's three processes. The site's own social influence page maps that pooled construct and its own jangle; here UTAUT is the terminus where the reasoned-action norm was folded into a broader family and renamed, so a reader who meets social influence in a UTAUT study is meeting subjective norm under another name.[5]

Unit

A user's belief about what important others want them to do with a system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Four Likert items on important and influential others and organisational support