"General attitudes" are part of the background factors in the Theory of Planned Behavior. They differ from attitudes towards the behavior, because general attitudes focus on a more global attitude object.
The two psychologists Eagly & Chaiken (1993) use a tripartite model to describe the attitude construct. Following this, attitudes encompass an affective dimension (e.g. feelings/emotions), a behavioral dimension (e.g. overt behavior) and a cognitive dimension (e.g. beliefs).
What do you think, can the tripartite model of attitudes be used to describe attitudes as part of the background factors of the Theory of Planned Behavior, or is there another definition?
In the TPB, only cognitive (beliefs) aspect of attitudes was part of the original measure of attitudinal construct and many researchers (with a few exceptions) have rely solely on this measure. However, scholars (such as Gray, Borden and Weigel 1985) have suggested the tripartite (cognitive, affective and conative) model of behavioural attitudes. From my perspective, attitudes and behaviour should be at the same level of specificity using the tripartite model, so I won't advocate for "general attitudes" as a measure of behaviour(s). Yes, you could use this tripartite model as part of the TPB; I'm using a similar model in my research though mine is extended beyond the TPB. I believe you could modify TPB to align with your study as AJzen as recommended and welcome the modification of the original model.
Thank you both for kind comments and recommendations, they are very helpful. In my point of view the difficulty arises due to different definitions of the term "belief" as used by different authors. There is no right answer, it just depents on the definiton one's using (e.g. beliefs as (cognitive) part of attitudes vs. attitudes and beliefs as separated constructs).
From a rather statistical point of view (multiple regression analysis; SEM calcuations) it would be interesting to find out, if a sophisticated measurement of attitudes (using the tripartie model) leads to higher explanation of variance in behavior. I assume, that the area of beliefs (cognitive, normative, behavioural) may have more influence on AB, SN or PBC than a sophisticated tripartite model of attitudes (as background factor).
From my perspective all these dimensions (affective, behavioral, cognitive) are important and you must take into account if you want to describe attiudes, but you never forget to consider external aspects, such as: economic factors. These factors neccesary affect attitudes,. and when you want to describe attitudes you must analyze them.
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