Toward a Comprehensive Framework of Study Abroad Intentions and Behaviors

Increased activity by U.S. students to study abroad has invited several studies that have investigated the reasons for U.S. students to study abroad. Literature in the context of study abroad choices has been fragmented, with each study presenting an ad-hoc set of factors the author/s deem as important or that have been shown to be important in previous literature. However, no study to date has attempted to identify a theoretical framework that explains why these factors should be important in explaining the intention to participate in a study abroad program. In this study, we use the theoretical background of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and trait theory to unify the existing body of literature and arrive at a model that predicts study abroad intentions. We test this model by means of a survey administered in a U.S. university.