Theory of planned behaviour and whistleblowing intention on academic misconduct: the moderating role of gender / Ahmad Amin ... [et al.]

Academic misconduct affects academic integrity. In response, universities have introduced internal control mechanisms, including whistleblowing, to address academic misconduct. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the factors derived from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), namely attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control, as well as gender, and their impact on the intention of Malaysian university students to blow the whistle on perceived academic misconduct. Furthermore, this study explored the moderating role of gender in the relationship between the TPB factors and the intention to blow the whistle on academic misconduct. The sample for this study comprised 315 undergraduate accounting students from three universities in Malaysia. By employing structural equation modeling techniques to analyze the collected data, the findings revealed that students' attitudes towards whistleblowing and their gender were the primary predictors of whistleblowing intention. Moreover, the results indicated that gender moderated the relationship between perceived behavior control and whistleblowing intention. This study provided valuable insights for implementing effective whistleblowing practices in academic settings to control academic misconduct by considering all factors that influence students' intentions.