Expectancy–value theory has been developed in many different fields including education, health, communications, marketing and economics.
Although the model differs in its meaning and implications for each field, the general idea is that there are expectations as well as values or beliefs that affect subsequent behavior.
John William Atkinson developed the expectancy–value theory in the 1950s and 1960s in an effort to understand the achievement motivation of individuals.
Theoretical[1] and empirical[2][3] work suggests that expectancies and values interact to predict important outcomes such as engagement, continuing interest, and academic achievement.
Other factors, including demographic characteristics, stereotypes, prior experiences, and perceptions of others' beliefs and behaviors affect achievement related outcomes indirectly through these expectancies and values.
[16] Generally speaking, Eccles and colleagues[1] implicate a wide array of different factors that determine an individual's expectancies and values, including: Experts agree that student motivation tends to decline throughout their time in school.
[14] The first is that students' conceptualizations of different domains become more complex and nuanced—they differentiate between subdomains, which results in an appearance of mean-level decrease.
In fact, a large body of research exists showing that shifts from learning to performance as an educational focus can be detrimental to student motivation.
[11][21] For example, value- focused interventions have been developed to help teachers design their curriculum in ways that allow students to see the connections between the material they learn in the classroom and their own lives.
[11] Expectancy–value theory was originally created in order to explain and predict individual's attitudes toward objects and actions.
Originally the work of psychologist Martin Fishbein[citation needed], the theory states that attitudes are developed and modified based on assessments about beliefs and values.
The primary work typically cited by scholars referring to EVT is Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen's 1975 book called Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research.
EVT also states that the result of the calculation, often called the "attitude", stems from complex equations that contain many belief/values pairs.
Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) represented the theory with the following equation where attitudes (a) are a factorial function of beliefs (b) and values (v).
Both TRA and TPB address predictive and explanatory weaknesses with EVT and are still prominent theories in areas such as health communication research, marketing, and economics.
Although not used as much since the early 1980s, EVT is still utilized in research within fields as diverse as audience research (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1985) advertising (Shoham, Rose, & Kahle 1998; Smith & Vogt, 1995), child development (Watkinson, Dwyer, & Nielsen, 2005), education (Eklof, 2006; Ping, McBride, & Breune, 2006), health communication (Purvis Cooper, Burgoon, & Roter, 2001; Ludman & Curry, 1999), and organization communication (Westaby, 2002).