TY - JOUR
T1 - Determinants of Global Korea Scholarship students’ word-of-mouth about Korea
AU - Ayhan, Kadir Jun
AU - Gouda, Moamen
N1 - Funding Information:
This research project was supported by the 2018 and 2019 Korea Foundation Support for Policy-Oriented Research grants. We are grateful to Hyelim Lee, Eriks Varpahovskis, Tom Norris and Jung Lim Han for invaluable research assistance. Additionally, we would like to thank Nancy Snow, Alexander Buhmann, Seong-Hun Yun, Jeongnam Kim, Yeunjae Lee, Ilan Manor, Matteo Fumagalli and two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on earlier drafts. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at 2019 Annual Convention of International Studies Association (ISA), 2019 ISA Asia-Pacific Conference 2019, Ninth Annual Symposium of the Consortium for Asian and African Studies and 2019 WATEF Spring Conference. We thank participants of these conferences for their helpful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - International student-mobility programs are one of the core programs countries employ as part of their public diplomacy portfolio. Policymakers assume that sponsored foreign students would develop positive beliefs about and emotions towards the host country, which in turn would lead to favorable behavior towards it. However, evaluations of such programs from a public diplomacy perspective are rare and Western-centric. In this paper, we analyze how Global Korea Scholarship students’ cognitive and affective evaluations of Korea influence their country image and word-of-mouth about Korea; i.e., in how they voluntarily share their experiences in Korea with others. We use variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data obtained from surveying 1107 scholarship holding foreign students. Our findings suggest that students evaluate Korea most positively in terms of its culture and nature, while their evaluations are not as positive in terms of the integrity and values of the country. For positive word-of-mouth, affection towards Korea plays the most significant role, while for negative word-of-mouth, the students’ beliefs about the country’s integrity and values had the most influence. Our findings help identify the strengths and weaknesses in Korea’s country image which can, in turn, inform and shape policies accordingly.
AB - International student-mobility programs are one of the core programs countries employ as part of their public diplomacy portfolio. Policymakers assume that sponsored foreign students would develop positive beliefs about and emotions towards the host country, which in turn would lead to favorable behavior towards it. However, evaluations of such programs from a public diplomacy perspective are rare and Western-centric. In this paper, we analyze how Global Korea Scholarship students’ cognitive and affective evaluations of Korea influence their country image and word-of-mouth about Korea; i.e., in how they voluntarily share their experiences in Korea with others. We use variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data obtained from surveying 1107 scholarship holding foreign students. Our findings suggest that students evaluate Korea most positively in terms of its culture and nature, while their evaluations are not as positive in terms of the integrity and values of the country. For positive word-of-mouth, affection towards Korea plays the most significant role, while for negative word-of-mouth, the students’ beliefs about the country’s integrity and values had the most influence. Our findings help identify the strengths and weaknesses in Korea’s country image which can, in turn, inform and shape policies accordingly.
KW - Country image
KW - Global Korea Scholarship
KW - Outcome evaluation
KW - Public diplomacy
KW - Student-mobility programs
KW - Word-of-mouth
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099097098&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s12564-020-09648-8
DO - 10.1007/s12564-020-09648-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099097098
SN - 1598-1037
VL - 22
SP - 15
EP - 29
JO - Asia Pacific Education Review
JF - Asia Pacific Education Review
IS - 1
ER -