The impact of social media engagement on enrolment intention: The moderating role of the student type

Abstract

Potential international students use social media platforms to acquire important information about schools and their brand reputations while making international higher education decisions. By means of a cross-sectional data from 384 international students at three universities in North Cyprus, the study aims to explore the relationship between social media engagement, information credibility and enrolment intention. Furthermore, if information credibility works as a mediator between social media engagement and enrollment intention, and the moderating role of student type. The study makes several contributions to the literature review and its recommendation helps top management at universities and policy makers in North Cyprus to pay attention to the role of social media in recruiting international students. The findings of this study indicate that credibility fully mediates the relationship between social media engagement and enrollment intention, but student type doesn’t moderate the relationship between information credibility and enrollment intention. The limitations and future studies are discussed in this study.