Title: The intention to become an expatriate: a multinational application of the theory of planned behaviour

Authors: Robert L. Engle; Christopher Schlägel; Nilolay Dimitriadi; Ekrem Tatoglu; Jasenko Ljubica

Addresses: School of Business, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mt Carmel Ave., Hamden CT, USA ' Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, PO Box 4120, 39016 Magdeburg, Germany ' School of National and World Economy, Rostov State Economic University (RINH), Bolshaya Sadovaya str. 69, 344002, Russia ' Bahcesehir University, Besiktas, Istanbul, 34349 Turkey ' Management Department, Faculty of Economics, University of Split, Cvite Fiskovica 5, 21000 Split, Croatia

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of the theory of planned behaviour for understanding individuals' intention to accept an offer to work in a foreign country and to assess its generalisability across countries. Furthermore, we tested the direct effect of gender on expatriate intention and its determinants. To address these objectives, we used a survey sample of 896 business students in Croatia, Germany, Russia, Turkey and the USA. The theory of planned behaviour explained a substantial amount of variance in intentions to accept a foreign assignment. As proposed, attitude towards expatriation, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control significantly influence individuals' expatriation intention. Men showed stronger intentions to expatriate than women. Moreover, the theory of planned behaviour was shown to be an effective predictor of expatriation intention across countries. Implications of these results for theory and practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: expatriation intention; theory of planned behaviour; TPB; gender; expatriates; expats; Croatia; Germany; Russia; Turkey; USA; United States; foreign assignments; subjective norms; perceived behavioural control.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2015.066623

European Journal of International Management, 2015 Vol.9 No.1, pp.108 - 137

Received: 22 Dec 2012
Accepted: 30 Jul 2013
Published online: 31 Dec 2014 *

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