How digital natives make their self-disclosure decisions: a cross-cultural comparison

Purpose Digital natives have become significant users of social network sites (SNSs); therefore, their disclosed personal information can be misused by SNS providers and/or other users. The purpose of this paper is to understand how digital natives make their self-disclosure decisions on SNSs, as well as whether the concept of culture can still be relevant to digital natives. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses were tested with survey data collected from the USA and China. Findings The results show that trust in SNSs and trust in SNS users are positively related to social rewards. Social rewards are positively related to intention to self-disclose, while privacy risk is positively related to privacy concerns. Further, culture significantly moderates the relationship between trust and social rewards. Originality/value The results show that while culture can still be helpful to explain digital natives' trust beliefs, digital natives have started to converge regarding their perceptions about privacy concerns and self-disclosure.