A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Privacy Calculus

The “privacy calculus” approach to studying online privacy implies that willingness to engage in disclosures on social network sites (SNSs) depends on evaluation of the resulting risks and benefits. In this article, we propose that cultural factors influence the perception of privacy risks and social gratifications. Based on survey data collected from participants from five countries (Germany [ n = 740], the Netherlands [ n = 89], the United Kingdom [ n = 67], the United States [ n = 489], and China [ n = 165]), we successfully replicated the privacy calculus. Furthermore, we found that culture plays an important role: As expected, people from cultures ranking high in individualism found i…