Psychological determinants of walking in a Brazilian sample: An application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

Encouraging the use of active travel modes, such as walking or cycling, can contribute to the negative impacts of car overuse, such as sedentarism and obesity, improving individuals' health. Thus, it is important to verify under which circumstances people are willing to use healthier travel modes. A frequently used model to understand walking behavior is Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior, and its extension, the Expanded Theory of Planned Behavior. Although this topic is widely investigated across the world, it is understudied in Brazilian culture. This study reports the psychological determinants of walking behavior in three Brazilian cities, indicating which theoretical model better fits the data: The Theory of Planned Behavior versus Extended Theory of Planned Behavior. Some 3296 residents of Distrito Federal, Florianópolis and Porto Alegre answered a 10-item scale. The face-to-face questionnaires were conducted in the participants’ residence. Most of the respondents were women, with age ranging from 18 to 101 years old. Structural Equation Modeling indicated the Theory of Planned Behavior be more powerful to explain walking behavior than the Expanded Theory of Planned Behavior. Perceived behavioral control and intention were the best predictors of walking. Results indicate that adding variables to the original model not always leads to better goodness of fit indices, suggesting that the components of the Theory of Planned Behavior are satisfactory to explain walking behavior in the Brazilian sample analyzed in this study.