An Empirical Study on the Changes of Internet Privacy Concern：Differences Between American and Chinese Cultures

Abstract

This study examines if there is any significant change in the level of concern about security or privacy among online populations over time, and demographics influences (age, gender, etc.) on privacy concerns, as well as the cross-cultural differences in the perception of privacy concerns while people are using the Internet between American and Chinese. The research was conducted based on various sources, which consisted of library searches and resources, news media, the Internet, scholarly articles, academic texts and other academic books, online databases, etc. The research results showed that people’s privacy concerns may change a lot as time goes on. And unlike the age, gender does not have much influence on Internet users’ privacy concern. The relationship between privacy concerns and gender of respondent was not statistically significant. Therefore, gender demographics do not have significant influence on net user’s privacy concerns. But the relationship between privacy concerns and the age of respondent was found to be statistically significant.Moreover, the study roughly found that Chinese respondents disclose more personal information than the U.S. And why is there difference between the U.S. and Chinese Internet users’ level of concerns about privacy? Through the research, the research believes that different culture and value play the most important role among all the possible reasons. The study tries to analyze the possible reasons from the perspective of culture and value.The western points of views in this study are mainly based on the United States and do not involve other countries.

Keywords: privacy concerns, internet, culture and value, demographics