The influence of service quality on international students’ loyalty: the mediating role of students’ affective commitment and perceived academic competence in higher education institutions in Hungary

The influence of service quality on international students’ loyalty: the mediating role of students’ affective commitment and perceived academic competence in higher education institutions in Hungary

T. O. Salem, Omar

Kiss, Marietta

Ihrig Károly gazdálkodás- és szervezéstudományok doktori iskola

Debreceni Egyetem::Gazdaságtudományi Kar

2023-06-07T09:38:23Z

2023-06-07T09:38:23Z

2023

2023-06-21

service quality, Hungarian higher education, student’s loyalty

Gazdálkodás- és szervezéstudományok

Társadalomtudományok

In today’s competitive environment, attracting new customers and retaining the existing ones is not an easy process, businesses seek to develop their services, essentially, the quality of their services. It is also true for the higher education sector, which is one of the crucial sectors in society, its role is not limited to offering educational services, but also has been becoming a factor that contributes to the country’s economic growth. In Hungary, the number of international students studying in higher education institutions has increased dramatically in recent years. The international orientation of Hungarian higher education institutions began at the beginning of the 2000s in order to bring in more foreign students whose number almost quadrupled between 2001 and 2021: based on the official statistics, the number of international students was 3,310 in 1990, 11,783 in 2001, 14,491 in 2005 and 26,682 in 2016 (KOVÁTS, 2018); according to the HUNGARIAN CENTRAL STATISTICAL OFFICE (2020), the number of foreign students studying in Hungarian higher education institutions in 2020 was 37,071, and in 2021/2022 it has raised to 40,292 based on the statistics of OFFICE OF EDUCATION (2021). This enormous increase in the number of international students studying in Hungary pushed me to choose this sector to apply the study. The current study used a model that reveals the differences between international students’ perceptions and expectations of service quality dimensions as well as the impact of those dimensions (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) on international students’ loyalty, perceived academic competence, and affective commitment. The study, in which 479 international students enrolled in the biggest and best five universities in Hungary were involved, also examined the role of perceived academic competence and students’ affective commitment as mediators, identifying the variations related to demographic factors as well. The study fulfilled its objectives by using the appropriate statistical tools (Smart-PLS and SPSS) in order to test the hypotheses. The international students studying at higher education institutions in Hungary have above than average perception of the five factors of the SERVQUAL model (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy), but at the same time, they had had high expectations before they enrolled in the university, which causes a negative gap between their expectations and perceptions, but the gaps are not high, the highest gap is found to be for responsiveness. This result matches with results of ALMEKHLAFI and ABDUL-GHANI (2022), GOVENDER et al. (2014), IBRAHIM et al. (2013), BOZBAY et al. (2020), and RASLI et al. (2012), the results of all these studies that have applied in higher education sector revealed a negative gap between the students’ expectations and perceptions toward the quality of higher education services. This negative direction of the gap indicates an important reality, i.e., students put high expectations before they enroll in their universities, which likely makes their perceptions lower than their expectations; it is possible to say it is the nature of humans that seek to obtain the best thing they need. In this case, the small negative gaps found in the current study do not reflect high dissatisfaction level; in contrast, big negative gaps would reflect it. Also, the dimensions of the SERVQUAL model are directly related to perceived academic competence. Therefore, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy dimensions of service quality affect the perception of academic competence that is formed during the students’ studies. This result is logical, since when a student has a high perception of the service quality of a university, it reflects positively on the perception of academic competence. In addition, it was also found that the service quality factors contribute positively to the affective commitment of students. The students’ emotions of desiring to belong or be related to their educational faculty and staff are vital for the educational environment of the faculty. Based on the results, perceived tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy that represent the service quality have significant positive impacts on and can predict the international students’ affective commitment to higher education institutions in Hungary. This result agrees with the study of QURESHI et al. (2022), which indicates that service quality contributes to students’ affective commitment. Furthermore, international students’ loyalty, which is a sensitive factor since it contributes to the sustainability of higher education institutions, in this study, is predicted and influenced by tangibility, reliability, assurance, and empathy dimensions of service quality, while responsiveness doesn’t influence the loyalty of students. Accordingly, good-looking equipment, physical buildings and structure, neatly dressed and groomed employees, and the willingness of the higher education institution to provide and assist services immediately are significant to raise the level of loyalty of the international students. At the same time, the perception of academic competence that is constructed during the students’ studies affects the loyalty of international students positively. Besides, findings indicate that when international students are committed affectively, their loyalty grows strongly. Therefore, it is evident that quality service has a notable positive impact on the loyalty of international students. This result supports the findings of prior studies by BORISHADE et al. (2021), MULYONO et al. (2020), and ALI et al. (2016), which found that by enhancing service quality, universities may also increase the loyalty of their international students. This is a top priority for higher education institutions because they compete to attract students who want to enroll in their programs. Perceived academic competence and students’ affective commitment mediates the relationship between service quality factors and international students’ loyalty. Based on the results, they have full mediation between responsiveness and students’ loyalty; between the other service quality factors and loyalty, they have partial mediation. It is an expected result based on the high importance of these factors as mentioned in the study of QURESHI et al. (2022) and RIBEIRO et al. (2022) that asserted the critical role of affective commitment as a mediator. The demographic characteristics of the study sample are represented by gender, age, level of study, year of study, student status, university, and field of study. The perception differences between the male and female groups are not significant toward the study’s variables. In terms of age, the differences are remarkable for some constructs, students in higher age groups have more positive responses than the other age categories. Moreover, regarding the level of study, PhD students have better perceptions toward the study’s variables. These results lead to an important conclusion, i.e., higher ages with a higher level of studies indicate the lowest negative gap as well as better perceptions of students. This result is also related to the level of experience the students have, PhD students are usually older than 27 years old, and they may be engaged in the academic work environment before or they are part of an academic staff in their countries, therefore, they are able to evaluate the service quality better, and have better perception about the academic competence, affective commitment, and higher level of loyalty than students in other age groups and at other levels of study. Moreover, the results show that the two groups of student status (scholarship and self-financed students) have significant differences in their perception of the study variables, where the higher perception is for scholarship students. That indicates when the consumer has to pay for the product/service themselves, they are more price sensitive, at the same time, more critical; when the financial burden is shared by somebody else (in this case, tuition is fully financed by the state), they are not so sensitive and not so critical. Student status is the only demographic variable that affects the loyalty of international students, and when it entered the model, the tangibility becomes insignificant in the influence on international students’ loyalty.

angol

PhD, doktori értekezés

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https://hdl.handle.net/2437/354770