Responding to a disruptive health crisis for higher education institutions: service quality and perceived safety effects on student satisfaction

ABSTRACT

Although the student satisfaction literature has been well-established, critical drivers of student satisfaction amid the COVID-19 pandemic require further investigation. Therefore, drawing upon expectation-disconfirmation theory (EDT) and protection motivation theory (PMT), we propose a conceptual model incorporating service quality and perceived safety to predict student satisfaction in times of pandemic. We applied a PLS-SEM approach to examine the model empirically with a sample of 505 university students in Taiwan. The findings revealed that higher education institutions (HEIs) should accentuate greater safety value by adjusting their service quality to current students’ challenges of attaining a safe state. The adjustments can strengthen students’ perceived safety, subsequently influencing their satisfaction with HEIs services. This study is an earlier attempt to contribute to the student satisfaction literature associated with a pandemic, and it offers valuable directions for HEIs in maintaining student satisfaction during or post-pandemic time.

KEYWORDS:

• Student satisfaction
• university service quality
• perceived safety
• covid-19
• higher education institutions
• health crisis management

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• M30
• M31

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their insightful comments which helped us to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).