Student engagement: the role of social influence and locus of control

Abstract

Engagement has become a popular topic in marketing research and practice. The present study focuses on higher education as a propitious context for the assessment of engagement phenomena and tests two sets of constructs as predictors of student engagement with a course. One set is conceptually grounded on the Social Influence Theory (SIT), whilst the other is grounded on the locus of control concept. We conducted surveys in higher education institutions and used structural equation modelling for the analysis. Results suggest that social influence constructs are stronger predictors compared to locus of control constructs. We discuss the results along with implications.