The Theoretical Analysis of the Allocation of Family Control Rights B Oc17 2014 | Page 8

J. Cai, T. Loo Table 6. Standardized parameter estimates. Standardised estimate Critical ratio p-value Quality  Image of the nation .234 3.354 *** Affinity with education  Quality .133 7.670 *** Purchase intent  Affinity with education .091 6.540 *** Enterprise  Image of the nation .159 3.363 *** Trendy  Enterprise .025 5.252 *** Innovative  Enterprise .200 5.543 *** Refined  Chic .158 7.141 *** Prestigious  Chic .172 7.376 *** Recommendation  Affinity with education .071 16.157 *** Affinity  Affinity with education .071 15.588 *** Ranking  Quality .145 7.789 *** Quality faculty  Quality .150 7.740 *** Chic  Image of the nation Cool  Enterprise Elegant  Chic Satisfaction  Affinity with education Student selection  Quality Note: ***Significant at .001; X2(61) = 97.97, p = .002, GFI = .967, AGFI = .950, CFI = .963 and TLI = .953, RMSEA = .037. In Figure 2, the numbers in bold are standardised regression weights. The numbers in italics inside the brackets beside the latent variables are squared multiple correlations (R2), which represent the proportion of variance that is explained by the predictors of the variable in question. Take for example, 52% of the variance in the image of education (as in “quality”) is explained by the image of the nation. When all the effects are taken together, the model accounted for 11% of the variance in “intention to study in the UK”. Enterprise and Chic were the two dimensions of the UK national image that drove the image of UK education, leading to affinity with education and finally intention to study in the UK. Respondents that rated the nation’s image high were more likely to consume its education. The decomposition of structural effects into direct and indirect effects (see Table 7) provided a more in-depth understanding of how the image of the nation impacts on students’ intention to study in the UK. Conceptually, the direct effects represent causal effects of one variable on another while indirect effects involve mediator variables that “transmit” a portion of the effect of a prior variable onto a subsequent one (Kline, 1998). The image of the nation has an indirect effect on affinity with education (.547) and intention to study in the UK (.185) while the image of education has an indirect effect on intention to study in the UK (.257). While the image of education has the strongest direct and indirect effect on affinity with education and intention to study in the UK respectively, the indirect effect of the national image on “affinity with education” (.547) is also strong, which supports the argument that the image of the nation casts a halo effect on the image of the nation’s tertiary education. This is in tandem with findings from other research in country of origin literature (e.g. Sauer et al., 1991; Knight & Calantone, 2000), which suggest that both the image of the nation and the image of the nation’s outputs influence consumers’ affinity with the outputs simultaneously. However, there was no suggestion in the analysis of a direct link from the “image of the nation” to “affinity with education”, implying that its influence is fully mediated via a person’s beliefs about that education. This is in accordance with Erickson et al. (1984), which indicated that c