Why and How People Use Location Sharing Services on Social Networking Platforms in China

Along with the development of information communication technology, there are more and more location sharing services on social networking platforms. Although China has the largest number of internet users in the world, users just started to use location sharing services in the last three years. This study aims to investigate why and how people use location sharing services on social networking platforms in China. To address this, four research questions are presented and 43 in-depth face-to-face interviews are carried out in China. Our results indicated that most users were concerned about privacy issues when they were using location sharing services on social networking platforms. Somewhat surprisingly, some of the interviewees indicated that they were not aware of the availability of the location sharing services on social networking platforms and they did not know how to use location sharing services. Furthermore, with respect to privacy protection, most interviewees indicated that WeChat did a better job than Weibo in China. Lastly, the results revealed that users wanted to use authority management to deal with private issues raised by the shared location information on social networking platforms.