Interactions Between Culture, Regulatory Structure, and Information Privacy Across Countries

The authors analyze the relationships between country culture and country regulatory structure pertaining to information privacy concerns (IPC) in the context of social media applications. Drawing on prior research, they develop a framework that integrates country culture and country regulatory structure and use it as the basis for a study that contrasts samples of 1086 professionals drawn from four countries-United States, United Kingdom, India, and Hong Kong-to assess the effects of national culture and a nation's regulatory structure on IPC and attitudinal beliefs about information privacy and professionals' behavioral reactions to IPC. They find that country culture has a strong bearing on explaining differences in individuals' IPC concerns, attitudinal beliefs about privacy, and behavioral reactions to privacy much more than does country regulatory structure. Country culture remains a significant factor in the management of information privacy. The results also show that country regulatory structure remains deficient in allaying individuals' concerns pertaining to information privacy.