The Role of Subjective Task Value in Forming Satisfaction and Loyalty Among Vietnamese International Students: A Structural Equation Model

Abstract

Relationship with international students can be beneficial to higher education in terms of financial and human resources. For this reason, establishing and maintaining such relationship are usually pre-eminent concerns for higher education providers. In this study, we extended the application of the disconfirmation-expectation model by incorporating three components from subjective task value (i.e., attainment, utility, and intrinsic) to predict the loyalty of international students toward their host countries. On a sample of 410 Vietnamese students enrolled in higher education institutions in over 15 countries across the globe, we employed structural equation model to validate the conceptual model. Our empirical findings revealed that satisfaction and disconfirmation still play important roles as direct and indirect antecedents of international student loyalty, respectively; nonetheless, the most impactful predictor is intrinsic value which directly and indirectly affects loyalty through the mediating roles of satisfaction and disconfirmation. Meanwhile, our findings also unveiled that attainment value has slight impact, but utility value does not have any impact on loyalty. A number of implications might be withdrawn for heads of universities and policy makers while practicing in internationalization of higher education as a consequence of these above results.