Response Behaviour of Edu-tourists to COVID-19: A Case of Edu-tourism Destination

The sudden closure by universities’ campuses across the globe, amid the coronavirus outbreak, brought out several adverse effects on the Edu-tourism, including boredom. Delineated by the arousal and planned behaviour theories, this research developed a conceptual framework investigating the impact of boredom on attitude and behaviours and their indirect impacts through psychological distress among the international students at the Eastern Mediterranean University during the COVİD‐19 pandemic. Partial least square (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse data from a sample of 260 students to explore the fore-mentioned relationships. The multigroup analysis was run to assess different responses of the students based on their gender and age. The research findings underscored the significant negative effect of boredom on edu-tourists attitude and insignificant positive effects on behaviour. Equally, the results of the link between students attitude and behaviour did not show any significance. Also, the mediation results demonstrated that psychological distress does not have any mediation effects. On the other hand, the results of the multigroup analysis unearth different responses by students on COVID-19. The male and female, the young and older students, have different reactionstowards the coronavirus pandemic. The study provides practical and theoretical implications, limitations and areas for further research. Keywords: COVID-19, Edu-tourists, Edu-tourism, state of boredom, psychological distress, Edu-tourists attitude, Edu-tourists behaviour.