The relevance of participation Behavior, organizational Commitment, and attitudinal loyalty to the management of professional associations

This paper studies participation behavior, organizational commitment, perceived value and attitudinal loyalty as psychological and behavioral antecedents of the intention to use the services offered by professional associations to their members. For this purpose, an empirical study was conducted and the technique used was partial least squares (PLS). The findings highlight the importance of membership commitment and attitudinal loyalty, which have a sequential mediating effect on the relationship between perceived value and intention to use. This study contributes to the literature on professional associations, due to the scarce research on the relationships between psychological and behavioral variables linked to the member-association relationship. Additionally, to date, the constructs involved had not been integrated into a comprehensive research framework in the field of professional associations. The implications for management are the new ways to improve the intention to use the services of professional associations suggested by our findings.