Management Science Letters (Jul 2019)
Investigating crucial factors affecting pharmacy students’ intention to work in rural area: A quantitative approach
Abstract
Maldistribution of skilled health workers between urban and rural area, especially pharmacist has become a global phenomenon. Not only the developing countries but also the developed country like the United States has been facing the same issue for a decades. Thus, many researchers have been trying to figure it out the reasons behind this occurrence. In their studies, most of the research-ers agreed that fresh graduates from pharmacy school were willing to work in the rural area. Therefore the primary aim of this study is to identify the important factors that can affect pharmacy stu-dents’ intention to work in rural area. Additionally, this study also tests the mediating effect of inter-est on the intention to work in the rural area of pharmacy students. A conceptual model is developed based on the two popular theories; namely theory of individual behavior and theory of interest. This model consists of three independent and one mediating and dependent variable. A quantitative ap-proach is used to test the hypotheses. With a structured questionnaire, this study is managed to get 675 students from different pharmacy schools. Multiple regression and Sobel tests are applied to test the direct and mediating effect. Results show that two out of three had a significant direct effect on pharmacy students’ intention to work in rural area. Similarly, a mediating effect also reveals the same. Based on the results, it is clear that predisposing variable is the most important for the phar-macy students’ interest to work in the rural area. The finding of this study, indeed, fills the paucity of the empirical evidence regarding pharmacy students’ working intention to the rural area, especial-ly in the Indonesian context. Based on the findings, this study provides several recommendations for the government as well as pharmacy curricula developer.
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