Effects of Perceived Privacy Risk and Disclosure Benefits on the Online Privacy Protection Behaviors among Chinese Teens

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper focus on the effects of perceived privacy risk and disclosure benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens, a pertinent subject. Although the work was based in some other works mentioned in the paper and some limitations exist, interesting results concerning the Chinese reality were obtained. In order to be accepted to publication, revisions are needed, in accordance with the following points:

 

All over the text letters of different sizes can be found, for example, in line 321 “greatest” has a different size from the other words.

Line 281 – In Table 1, replace the proportions by the correspondent percentages;

Line 333 - Replace "... latent variables is non linearity." by "... latent variables is non linear.";

Lines 340 – replace “…risk, whose normalized factor…” by  “…risk, which normalized factor…”

Author Response

This paper focus on the effects of perceived privacy risk and disclosure benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens, a pertinent subject. Although the work was based in some other works mentioned in the paper and some limitations exist, interesting results concerning the Chinese reality were obtained. In order to be accepted to publication, revisions are needed, in accordance with the following points:

Response: Special thanks for your nice comments and encouraging words. We have addressed your specific questions and concerns below.

All over the text letters of different sizes can be found, for example, in line 321 “greatest” has a different size from the other words.

Line 281 – In Table 1, replace the proportions by the correspondent percentages;

Line 333 - Replace "... latent variables is non linearity." by "... latent variables is non linear.";

Lines 340 – replace “…risk, whose normalized factor…” by  “…risk, which normalized factor…”

Response: Thank you for pointing them out. We have had the paper thoroughly edited and all errors have been corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report

In the summary, it must be completed with a brief introduction of one or two lines, as well as indicating some conclusion and measures to be taken in view of the results found. It is a pity that many good conclusions are mentioned in the article and some of them are not included in the summary.

This summary is very short. Therefore, it is suggested to the authors to expand it.

In this magazine (Sustainability), citations should be numbered in brackets [1] when they appear.

It is highly commendable that the authors acknowledge that there are no studies on the privacy of young Chinese Internet users, and there are studies on young Westerners.

The review of the literature that is made is very complete and is very well founded. I insist that authors respect the format of the citations they use. And that it is a pity that there are no studies on Eastern youth, hence this study is very valuable, pertinent and very interesting for the entire scientific community.

 

The methodology used is very precise for the case at hand. And the results are displayed correctly in the tables provided. Congratulations, they are very well presented.

 

Likewise, the conclusions are direct and of great interest to the scientific community. We must thank the authors who have elaborated extensive and well-written conclusions, in a clear and direct way.

 

However, I regret once again that the final references are not in the format required by Sustainability magazine. And they must be changed.

Author Response

In the summary, it must be completed with a brief introduction of one or two lines, as well as indicating some conclusion and measures to be taken in view of the results found. It is a pity that many good conclusions are mentioned in the article and some of them are not included in the summary.

This summary is very short. Therefore, it is suggested to the authors to expand it.

In this magazine (Sustainability), citations should be numbered in brackets [1] when they appear.

It is highly commendable that the authors acknowledge that there are no studies on the privacy of young Chinese Internet users, and there are studies on young Westerners.

The review of the literature that is made is very complete and is very well founded. I insist that authors respect the format of the citations they use. And that it is a pity that there are no studies on Eastern youth, hence this study is very valuable, pertinent and very interesting for the entire scientific community.

The methodology used is very precise for the case at hand. And the results are displayed correctly in the tables provided. Congratulations, they are very well presented.

Likewise, the conclusions are direct and of great interest to the scientific community. We must thank the authors who have elaborated extensive and well-written conclusions, in a clear and direct way.

However, I regret once again that the final references are not in the format required by Sustainability magazine. And they must be changed.

Response: Special thanks for your nice comments and encouraging words. We have addressed your specific questions in this revised munuscript. We expanded the summary and edited the format of the citations.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has the potential to contribute to the existent scholarship on online perceived privacy risk and privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens. In my view, it is well-written and well-referenced.

Before its acceptance if have the following comments/suggestions:

(1)  Additional details about study’s results should be stated in the abstract.

(2)  The multitude of hypotheses and their rather intuitive formulation gives the impression of a thesis; One solution to streamline the paper would be to focus on some of these hypotheses and to make room for more discussions and connection with the existent literature. The findings and conclusions should reflect some of these changes.

(3)  Please define the age interval for minors in the following paragraph: (rows 28-29) “A survey revealed that by July 2018, the internet access rate among minors in Mainland China was up to 93.7%”. I think, the reader should know how young were the subjects questioned in the survey.

Last but not least, the authors conceive the internet users (in this case: Chinese teens) as rational actors capable to distinguish between privacy risk and disclosure benefits. In my view, this perspective had to be nuanced and to incorporate more elements about individuals’ embedment in social milieus and groups. If one’s friends are active on some social platforms and/or play some games, individual acts in structural conditions of social constraints and is less concerned about privacy risks or benefits directly provided by the app.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article has the potential to contribute to the existent scholarship on online perceived privacy risk and privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens. In my view, it is well-written and well-referenced.

Response: Thank you very much for your nice summary on our paper. We have addressed your specific questions and concerns below.

 

Before its acceptance if have the following comments/suggestions:

• Additional details about study’s results should be stated in the abstract.

Response: Thanks for your nice advice. We have added some details about the results in the revised manuscript.

 

• The multitude of hypotheses and their rather intuitive formulation gives the impression of a thesis; One solution to streamline the paper would be to focus on some of these hypotheses and to make room for more discussions and connection with the existent literature. The findings and conclusions should reflect some of these changes.

Response: Thank you for your suggestions. These hypotheses mainly revolve around the four variables, combined with the protection motivation theory with teens’ privacy perception, study the influence process of teens’ perceived privacy risk and disclosure benefits on privacy protection behavior, and refute the privacy paradox proposed by previous scholars in combination with the Chinese context, with a clear focus.

• Please define the age interval for minors in the following paragraph: (rows 28-29) “A survey revealed that by July 2018, the internet access rate among minors in Mainland China was up to 93.7%”. I think, the reader should know how young were the subjects questioned in the survey.

Response: Thank you so much for your careful check. We added the age of the survey in the revised manuscript.

Last but not least, the authors conceive the internet users (in this case: Chinese teens) as rational actors capable to distinguish between privacy risk and disclosure benefits. In my view, this perspective had to be nuanced and to incorporate more elements about individuals’ embedment in social milieus and groups. If one’s friends are active on some social platforms and/or play some games, individual acts in structural conditions of social constraints and is less concerned about privacy risks or benefits directly provided by the app.

Response: Thank you for your interesting thoughts. As you said, individual behaviors would be affected by the social milieus and groups, so future research should also consider these environmental factors. However, our research does not presuppose that Chinese teens are rational actors. In the questionnaire, we did not explicitly inform them that the content of these measurements pertained to privacy risks or benefits, but measured their psychology and behavior according to the scales used in previous studies, and finally analyzed them as risk and benefit perception dimensions.

Reviewer 4 Report

Thanks a lot for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled "Effects of perceived privacy risk and disclosure benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens" (sustainability-2122613). This study employed a questionnaire survey and SEM approach to analyze the effects of perceived privacy risk and perceived privacy benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens. The paper could make a potential contribution, there are, however, a few questions to be clarified:

 1. Although the introduction does a good job as explaining the importance of teens' online privacy protection, it does not clearly pose the specific research questions of the paper. That is, we do not clearly understand why the authors attempt to explore how privacy and disclosure impacts privacy protection behaviors, especially from the perspective of perceived privacy risk and benefit.

Besides, the contributions need more work to be highlighted and clarified based on specific gaps, and suggesting that contributions can be elaborated in the section of Introduction.

2. It is also a good job that a multi-stage, stratified-cluster random sampling approach was employed in the data collection, while I suggest the sampling process could be described in more detailed. For example, how did you make sure random sampling in each stage, how did your questionnaires were distributed to the teenagers in each natural class, and how did you guarantee the quality of data in your questionnaire........

3.Generally, some demographic characteristics are often impact the relationships among the variables in many studies. However, why did you regard the related demographics as controllable variables when you tested the hypotheses by SEM? Additionally, we could also compare or analyze the differences of the respondents coming from different regions, ethnic group or others, which may be more valuable for the corresponding decision makers.

4. The practical implications of the findings were not pointed out in the section of Discussion and conclusion.

Author Response

Thanks a lot for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled "Effects of perceived privacy risk and disclosure benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens" (sustainability-2122613). This study employed a questionnaire survey and SEM approach to analyze the effects of perceived privacy risk and perceived privacy benefits on the online privacy protection behaviors among Chinese teens. The paper could make a potential contribution, there are, however, a few questions to be clarified:

Response: Thank you very much for your positive and encouraging comments. We have addressed your specific questions and concerns below.

 

1. Although the introduction does a good job as explaining the importance of teens' online privacy protection, it does not clearly pose the specific research questions of the paper. That is, we do not clearly understand why the authors attempt to explore how privacy and disclosure impacts privacy protection behaviors, especially from the perspective of perceived privacy risk and benefit.

Besides, the contributions need more work to be highlighted and clarified based on specific gaps, and suggesting that contributions can be elaborated in the section of Introduction.

Response: Thank you for your constructive suggestions. We have added research gaps and contributions in the section of introduction, as quoted below from the introduction:

According to the protection motivation theory (PMT), when people perceive privacy risks and threats, they adopt privacy protection behaviors (Rogers, 1975; Youn, 2005). However, when people perceive privacy benefits that outweigh privacy risks, they may be willing to disclose their privacy in order to obtain corresponding benefits, called the "privacy paradox" (Barth & De Jong, 2017). This paper examines the correlations between teens' perceived privacy risk, perceived disclosure benefits, and online privacy protection behaviors using the structural equation model (SEM) method based on data collected from a questionnaire, with information privacy concerns as a mediator variable. Due to differences in privacy culture in different regions, cultural dimensions are also significantly related to privacy awareness behavior (Reed et al., 2016). Therefore, there are crucial empirical and theoretical implications of understanding teens' privacy behaviors and their influencing factors in non-Western contexts. This study makes two research contributions. First, it provides empirical evidence for teens' privacy concept in a non-Western, authoritarian context. Second, the study explains the mechanism and  process of the influence of privacy risk perception and benefits perception on protection behavior, enriching our understanding of teens' online privacy protection behaviors.

References

Barth, S., & De Jong, M. D. (2017). The privacy paradox–Investigating discrepancies between expressed privacy concerns and actual online behavior–A systematic literature review. Telematics and informatics, 34(7), 1038-1058.

Reed, P. J., Spiro, E. S., & Butts, C. T. (2016). Thumbs up for privacy?: Differences in online self-disclosure behavior across national cultures. Social science research, 59, 155-170.

Rogers, R. W. (1975). A protection motivation theory of fear appeals and attitude change1. The journal of psychology, 91(1), 93-114.

Youn, S. (2005) Teenagers' perceptions of online privacy and coping behaviors: a risk-benefit appraisal approach. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49(1): 86-110.

 

2. It is also a good job that a multi-stage, stratified-cluster random sampling approach was employed in the data collection, while I suggest the sampling process could be described in more detailed. For example, how did you make sure random sampling in each stage, how did your questionnaires were distributed to the teenagers in each natural class, and how did you guarantee the quality of data in your questionnaire........

Response:Thanks for your encouraging comments and detailed suggestions. Considering the overall length of this paper, many details are not clearly presented here, and we supplemented some details in the revised manuscript in the Data section.

Due to the large gap in the development of the internet economy among different regions in Mainland China, the questionnaire survey took a multi-stage, stratified-cluster random sampling approach. In the first step, according to the administrative division of China, we randomly selected two or three provinces (municipalities or autonomous regions) from the eastern, central, and western regions. In the second step we selected a capital city from each province (municipality or autonomous region). According to the 2018 provincial GDP ranking, we chose a prefecture-level city or municipal district with a broad economic gap with the capital city. In the third step we selected a local public secondary school with a medium and high comprehensive strength ranking, and then randomly select one or two classes from the Senior High School Division. We conducted the questionnaire survey by class. Almost all schools prohibit students from bringing mobile phones and computers onto the campus, so we mainly distributed paper questionnaires by contacting school principals and local volunteers. Additionally, some students filled out electronic questionnaires in the school’s online information courses.

To ensure reliability and validity, we first distributed 400 prediction questionnaires in community libraries, parks, and museums frequented by teenagers in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. And we also conducted in-depth interviews with 14 adolescent respondents. Finally, we revised the questionnaire items according to the interview feedback.

 

3. Generally, some demographic characteristics are often impact the relationships among the variables in many studies. However, why did you regard the related demographics as controllable variables when you tested the hypotheses by SEM? Additionally, we could also compare or analyze the differences of the respondents coming from different regions, ethnic group or others, which may be more valuable for the corresponding decision makers.

Response:Thank you for your interesting thoughts. Indeed, as you say, certain demographic variables may influence teens’ privacy protection behaviors. This study mainly combines protection motivation theory with Chinese teens’ privacy behaviors, focusing on discussing the influence processes of privacy risk perception and benefit perception on privacy protection behaviors, and thus establishes seven related research hypotheses. Considering the theoretical structure and length of the paper, the influence of demographic factors can be further studied in future research.

4. The practical implications of the findings were not pointed out in the section of Discussion and conclusion.

Response:Thank you for the thoughtful advice. In the section of Discussion and conclusion, the revised manuscript is further refined on practical implications.

Reviewer 5 Report

The article touches upon topical issues of protecting children in the information environment. Interesting studies have been carried out and significant results have been obtained. The article should definitely be published.

Author Response

The article touches upon topical issues of protecting children in the information environment. Interesting studies have been carried out and significant results have been obtained. The article should definitely be published.

Response: We are happy to hear that you enjoyed this paper. Thank you for the nice summary and positive comments.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Overall, this manuscript has much more improvements, I think it could be under consideration for publication in this journal.