The COVID-19’s impacts on study abroad intentions ---- an empirical study based on the Chinese student’s sample

Abstract

Under the COVID-19 global pandemic, the international education industry is facing an unprecedented challenge. To identify the COVID-19’s effects on students’ study abroad intentions and the underlying mechanisms, a conceptual model is built by integrating the international students’ decision model with the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The conceptual model is tested empirically, using cross-tabulation analysis, the multinomial logit model (MNL) and the structural equation model (SEM) with a data set including 428 Chinese students. The results show that although COVID-19 mainly lead to the negative effects on the students’ intentions to study abroad, it also becomes a “push factor” for increasing the study abroad intentions for some local students. The deeper analysis indicates that the mechanism for intention change is mainly through the subjective norms while there is no evidence for the importance of attitudes or the perceived behavioral controls within this process.