Theory of reasoned goal pursuit applied to compliance with a medical directive

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore a novel problem, one of compliance with society-wide recommendations by medical and health authorities. During the pandemic, Australian citizens were enforced with a COVID-related directive, QR code check-in when entering venues, to enable tracing of individuals who had encountered an infected person. The theory of reasoned goal pursuit (TRGP), an extension of the theory of planned behaviour, is a new theory that, in this context, suggests the dominant determinants of compliance with this directive are people’s active goals. This study provides a test of the TRGP for this novel behaviour. The research comprised an elicitation study of 169 Australians to identify their procurement and approval goals, behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs regarding complying with QR code check-in requirements. Then, a prospective study (N = 343) was employed to assess the effects of these goals and beliefs on compliance using a path model. The model accounted for a great deal of the variance in motivation and intention, and a moderate portion of variance in QR code check-in behaviour. Procurement and approval goals predicted attitude and subjective norm, respectively, and both negatively moderated the effect of other beliefs. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control predicted behaviour via motivation and intention. Current findings add to the growing research on the TRGP and may contribute both to pandemic preparedness and future synthesis and refinement of social cognition models that acknowledge the role of goals in fulfillment of actions.