Understanding Contextual Factors Influencing Chinese Students to Study at a Hong Kong Institution's Intra-Country Branch Campus

International branch campuses (IBCs) are commonly used by nations and universities to achieve internationalization. Although existing research has examined students’ attitudes and behaviors toward IBCs, few studies have investigated these issues in an intra-country context. Hong Kong institutions’ IBCs in the Greater Bay Area of Mainland China are examples of cross-border education that is offered under China's ‘one country, two systems’ policy. Using the concept of global-national-local imbrication as the theoretical lens, this qualitative study explores contextual factors influencing students’ motivations to enroll at a Hong Kong instituion's intra-country IBC. The findings suggest that students are drawn by global (e.g., high level of internationalization), national (e.g., shared culture), and local (e.g., high function-price ratio) factors to enroll at IBCs. These findings have generated new insights into students’ motivations within a unique environmental context, and the global-national-local imbrication paradigm provides a new attempt to explain the destination and institutional choices of students in transnational education.