Explicating Individual Training Decisions Based on Instrumentality Theory

Participation of individuals in continuing vocational training (CVT) stagnated or even declined since the late 1990s in numerous countries. In light of the long-standing predictions of an increasing need for CVT, this development is puzzling.

Several theories exist to explain CVT participation. Nevertheless, most empirical studies use merely personal and occupational characteristics as the main predictors of CVT participation. Also, many studies scrutinize the decisions of either participants or non-participants relying on ex-post survey data. Respondents, however, may rationalize their past behavior and give distorted assessments of their ex-ante training motives. Hence, these works do not provide an integrated explanation of individual training decisions and give no answer as to why participation does not live up to scientific and political expectations.

We apply instrumentality theory to explicate individual training decisions. Based on novel German individual data, we estimate the effect of subjective expected utility (SEU) from CVT, the effect of restrictions, and the effect of personal characteristics on the willingness-to pay for CVT. To construct individual SEU-scores, we confronted interviewees with a specific training scenario and gathered information on

• importance-ratings of nine potential CVT-outcomes,
• the perceived probabilities that successful training would actually help achieve each outcome
• the perceived probabilities of training success.

Our results imply that

• SEU is a main driver of training decisions.
• Financial restrictions are most decisive for persons with higher training tendencies.
• Lack of time helps explain why some individuals are entirely unwilling to participate.
• The regional infrastructure is a crucial training determinant.
• Age and vocational degree do not directly affect training decisions. Yet, persons in specific occupational settings do exhibit a lower training tendency. Also, training behavior of these persons appears to be more rigid and less likely to react to changes in their cognitive training attitudes.