Attitude and risk: Exploring the relationship

The attitude and risk constructs each enjoy prominence in marketing research. Attitude is conceptualized and widely accepted as a construct predicated on beliefs. Risk shares the same conceptual underpinning, for risk is predicated on expectations, itself a beliefbased concept. The idea of two constructs predicated on beliefs presents a possible conceptual overlap between the two constructs depending upon the nature of these beliefs. No research, however, has investigated the two constructs in such a beliefs similarity context. Thus, this research explored the proposition that in situation‐specific instances risk may share a number of beliefs in common with attitude and, as such, is not to be viewed as a construct separate from attitude, but as an integral, inherent component of attitude formation. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.