The Theory of Reasoned Action posits that individual behavior is driven by behavioral intentions where behavioural intentions are a function of an individual’s attitude toward the behaviour and subjective norms surrounding the performance of the behavior.

Attitude toward the behavior is defined as the individual’s positive or negative feelings about performing a behaviour. It is determined through an assessment of one’s beliefs regarding the consequences arising from a behavior and an evaluation of the desirability of these consequences. Formally, overall attitude can be assessed as the sum of the individual consequence x desirability assessments for all expected consequences of the behavior.

Subjective norm is defined as an individual’s perception of whether people important to the individual think the behavior should be performed. The contribution of the opinion of any given referent is weighted by the motivation that an individual has to comply with the wishes of that referent. Hence, overall subjective norm can be expressed as the sum of the individual perception x motivation assessments for all relevant referents.

Algebraically, The Theory of Reasoned Action can be represented as B ≈ BI = w1AB + w2SN where B is behavior, BI is behavioral intention, AB is attitude toward behavior, SN is subjective norm, and w1 and w2 are weights representing the importance of each term.