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Research on internationalization in higher education has not shed enough light on how cross-border student mobility might contribute to the issue of sustainability. Given that a sustainable movement of loyal international students could help sustain the financial income, ranking, and prospective human resources of the host universities and countries, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms that lead to such loyalty. Specifically, this study adds to the literature by examining how switching cost interacts with disconfirmation and satisfaction in generating attitudinal and behavioral loyalty among international students. The study, surveying 410 Vietnamese students who are studying at either at the undergraduate or graduate level in 15 countries across the globe, first adopts confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using software SAS 9.3 to evaluate if multiple fit indices, the standardized factor loading, and the average variance extracted scores are satisfactory. It then employs the Structural Equation Model (SEM) to test five hypotheses concerning the interaction between disconfirmation and satisfaction as well as among satisfaction, switching cost and behavioral/attitudinal loyalty. The results find that disconfirmation has both direct and indirect impact, while satisfaction only has a direct impact on attitudinal loyalty. Meanwhile, switching cost is found to have a direct impact on behavioral loyalty, but not on attitudinal loyalty. Based on these findings, the study proposes some theoretical and managerial implications for sustainability in general and sustainability of higher education in particular as well as direction for future studies.

Regarding higher education as a type of extended duration service, this article proposes a framework considering adjusted expectation, disconfirmation, satisfaction, and commitment in a conceptual model to explain international student loyalty. Employing a structure equation model to the sample data collected from 252 Vietnam overseas students studying in more than 15 countries, this study confirms the direct and indirect roles of satisfaction and commitment in student loyalty. Given the nature of extended duration service for higher education, another important finding is that adjusted expectation mediates the satisfaction–commitment relationship and subsequently affects student loyalty through commitment. An additional discovery is the encounter of a direct path from disconfirmation to adjusted expectation and to commitment, previously overlooked in prior studies. Our findings have implications for university and government strategies for retaining international students.

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This study examines the effect of tourism development on energy consumption, CO2 and economic growth in China over the period from 1981 to 2010. An extension of ARIMA model was performed to investigate the relationship between variables. Two principle test results emerge from this study. First, increases on visitors may largely give rise to GDP. On the other hand, increase on tourism receipts may result in greater energy consumption and CO2 emission to some extent as compared to number of visitors. However, the amount of effects from either tourism receipts or number of visitors to energy consumption and CO2 emission are limited. From an energy conservation and economic growth point of view, the results support the hypothesis of tourism-led economic growth in the China economy with relatively limited increase of energy consumption and CO2 emission.