Exploring Adolescent Cyberbullying Behavior through the Theory of Planned Behavior

Abstract

With the fast-growing Internet and social media, cyberbullying among teenagers is now a significant international problem for the field of mental health and social adjustment. The behavior is the product of the interaction among personal attributes, social norms, family environment, and situational factors. According to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the present study develops a model to further investigate the interplay among attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, behavioral intention, and actual cyberbullying behavior. A total of 400 questionnaires were administered to 13–19-year-old adolescents from one middle school at Foshan, Guangdong Province, with 381 valid questionnaires recovered. With the help of SPSS 26.0, the descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and structural equation models were performed. Results show that attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are the significant predictors for cyberbullying intention, and behavioral intention is the significant intermediary for these variables and actual behavior. The study verifies the rationality for TPB to be applied to the issue of cyberbullying and for online moral education and adolescent psychological intervention to have empirical evidence.