Students' beliefs, attitudes and intentions to major in accounting

Lin Mei Tan and Fawzi Laswad

Accounting Education, 2006, vol. 15, issue 2, pages 167-187

Abstract: This study extends the literature that uses the theory of planned behaviour in examining the factors that impact on students' intentions to major in accounting and non-accounting disciplines. A survey of a sample of business students enrolled in an introductory accounting course in a New Zealand University was conducted to gather data about their intended academic majors, and their beliefs and attitudes towards majoring in accounting and non-accounting. The results show that three factors (personal, referents, and control) are determinants of students' intention to major in accounting or other business disciplines. Further analysis revealed that the students' major intentions are influenced by important referents' perceptions. In particular, parents appear to have a stronger influence on students' intentions to major in accounting. Comparisons of differential personal perceptions by accounting and non-accounting majors revealed that accounting majors hold positive perceptions of some of the qualities of the study of accounting and the accounting profession. Significant differences were also found in the control perception between accounting and non-accounting major students.

Keywords: Accounting major; accounting education; accounting career; accounting profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639280600787194 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:accted:v:15:y:2006:i:2:p:167-187

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/subscription.asp

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting Education is edited by Richard M. S. Wilson

More articles in Accounting Education from Taylor and Francis Journals
Series data maintained by Michael McNulty ().