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This paper first examines the reasons for the limited success of empirical studies of movement behavior in documenting a consistent relationship between spatial behavior and its psychological antecedents. It then proposes an integrated conceptual framework to incorporate the mediating and determining role of constraints on spatial behavior. It is argued that acceptance of the implicit assumptions of utility maximization and volitional control has encouraged an undue emphasis on the attitudinal determinants of behavior to the detriment of its nonattitudinal components. Thus, model misspecification has compounded the inferential problems stemming from conceptual and operational ambiguities, from spatial aggregation, and from excessive dependence on a narrow range of linear models. By providing a flexible foundation for the reconceptualization of the processes underlying spatial decision making, recent developments in attitude theory are pointing the way toward redressing this imbalance in research efforts. Disaggregate models of travel, mobility, and migration behavior should account for the inconsistencies between thought and action, not ignore them. Models should thus be formulated within conceptual frameworks able to incorporate into existing psychological theories of behavior an operational formulation of the structural, social, and institutional constraints that account for the missing links between spatial behavior and its psychological antecedents.

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This article examines the differences in adaptive behavior manifested by Sino-Vietnamese and ethnic Vietnamese refugees resettled in two major areas of the United States. Contingency analyses of a survey of 602 refugees interviewed in Illinois and California confirm the disadvantage of the Chinese group with respect to both acculturation and economic self-sufficiency variables. Although the two groups differ statistically in their pre-arrival characteristics and encountered somewhat different socioeconomic circumstances in the course of resettlement, adaptive differences remain after pre-arrival characteristics and resettlement context have been controlled. The adverse effect of Chinese ethnicity on adaptation is especially noticeable for the refugee expected to be most adaptable by virtue of their more favorable socioeconomic backgrounds and of the more facilitative circumstances of their resettlement.