The influence of religious orientations and ethnicity on privacy paradox phenomenon

Abstract

Religion and ethnicity are two important elements that shape the norms of individual and social behaviours of many Malaysians. Each major ethnic group in Malaysia, namely Malay, Chinese and India, is recognized via a distinct religion, language and cultural heritage. However, little is known about the influence of religion and ethnicity on the social media among young generation in Malaysia. Despite the concerns on privacy, the young generation continues to disclose a huge amount of personal information on social media. In order to minimize privacy risks, they also devise various strategies to protect such disclosure. This phenomenon is referred as ‘privacy paradox’. Privacy paradox phenomenon has sparked interests among researchers in the information systems domain to investigate privacy concerns and information disclosure within the context of people on social media. The study of privacy paradox among the young generation in Malaysia is still absent. Hence, this study aims to extend research on privacy paradox phenomenon on social media by exploring the possible influence of religion and ethnicity among Malaysian adolescents. A questionnaire was distributed to 600 Form 4 students (16 year-old) from 11 secondary schools in Johor and Melaka. Religion was measured in terms of two dimensions of religious orientations by adapting the well-known Religious Orientation Scale. Measurement items for privacy paradox phenomenon include perceived benefits, perceived privacy risks, and information disclosure behaviours on social media which were adapted from the literature. Data from 488 returned questionnaires were used for analysis. Standard multiple regression and parallel multiple mediation regression analyses were performed on three separate ethnic-based data sets: Malay (Islam), Chinese (Buddhist), and Indian (Hindu). For each data set, the results of standard multiple regression show that extrinsic religious orientation has significant influenced on information disclosure behaviours on social media. Meanwhile, only Malay (Islam) data set recorded significant regression results for parallel multiple mediation models. The statistical models suggest that certain perceived benefits and certain perceived privacy risks mediated the predictions of certain type of information disclosure behaviours due to either one of the religious orientations. Following these analyses, conditional process analysis was performed to examine the moderation effects of ethnicity on the parallel multiple mediation models. The analysis was performed on one data set that combined all ethnic-based data sets. It was discovered from the models that Malaysian adolescents, regardless of their ethnic groups, perceived similar benefits and privacy risks that significantly mediated the relationships between a particular religious orientation and a particular type of behaviour of information disclosure on social media. The statistical models cast a new light on the differences of outcomes from the three analyses. These differences between combined data set and separate ethnic-based data sets imply that privacy paradox phenomenon on social media could behave differently when investigated either at individual-level or ethnic-level or national-level. Overall, this study has contributed significant findings for the contention that religious orientations and ethnicity can have a substantial influence on privacy paradox phenomenon. The findings can benefit researchers in information systems domain by providing new insights in interpreting or explaining about the phenomenon.