Effect of Cultural Factors on Online Privacy Concern : Korea vs. China

This paper has studied whether cultural factors have an effect on privacy concern of Internet users in Korea and China. The result has shown that power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation are positively related to privacy concern, while masculinity is negatively related to privacy concern. This study has also found some similarities and differences between the two countries. First, privacy concern of Korean Internet users is significantly higher than that of Chinese users. Second, individualism and uncertainty avoidance significantly affect privacy concern in both Korea and China, although individualism in Korea has stronger effect than that in China. Third, long term orientation has a significant effect in only Korea while power distance is significant only in China. These results suggest that an online company doing businesses in multiple countries should have country-specific privacy policies to deal with the privacy concern of Internet users in different countries.