Stakeholder’s perception on Malaysia’s edu-tourism sustainability performance

This study evaluates international students’ satisfaction with Malaysia as a study destination. The assessment of edu-tourism sustainability is important to help Malaysia achieve its aspiration to become an education hub in Asia. Hence, indicators that capture international students’ satisfaction should be converted into sustainability score guidelines that Malaysia can use to improve edu-tourism performance. Deviating from past sustainable tourism research that mainly investigated the perceptions of supply-side stakeholders (e.g., destination managers’ and residents’ perception of economic, social, and environmental sustainability), this study adds value to the sustainable tourism literature by examining the perspectives of demand-side stakeholders in the form of tourists’ satisfaction. A quantitative design was used, where questionnaires were administered to collect data from 264 international students of public and private sector universities. Structural equation modelling with the SMARTPLS software, as well as descriptive analysis, were used to identify significant indicators of Malaysia’s edu-tourism sustainability performance. The results indicate that Malaysia’s edu-tourism sustainability performance is operating within the “potentially sustainable” category, with improvements needed to progress to the “sustainable” status. Six indicators (university reputation, perceived faculty academic competence, student-student interactions, perceived quality of faculty communications, climate and study environment, information availability) were found to perform moderately. The best-performing indicators were the perceived quality of electronic communications and student-administrator interaction, while the worst-performing indicators were social links and geographic proximity.

The article concludes with a discussion of the study’s implications along with suggestions for future research.