Differences in Privacy-Protective Behaviors by Internet Users in Korea and China

Privacy-protective behavior can be classified into passive behavior and active behavior. Passive behavior includes refusal, misrepresentation, and removal, while word-of-mouth, complaint, and seeking for help belong to active behavior. Internet users in different countries may take different types of privacy-protective behavior because of cultural and social differences. This study analyzes the differences in Internet users’ privacy-protective behavior between Korea and China. Korean Internet users take refusal, complaint, and seeking to protect their privacy information, while misrepresentation is not an option for Korean Internet users. Chinese Internet users take refusal, complaint, seeking, and misrepresentation to protect their privacy information. In Korea, passive behavior (refusal) is chosen more often than active behavior (complaint and seeking for help), while in China active behavior(complaint and seeking for help) is preferred to passive behavior (refusal and misrepresentation). The differences of privacy-protective behavior in the two countries may provide some implications for online companies, if they want to avoid the business risk due to privacy concerns and to take appropriate steps to deal with privacy-protective behavior by Internet users.