A Cross-Culture Empirical Study of M-commerce Privacy Concerns

Abstract

There has been little empirical research about consumer information privacy concerns in the context of mobile commerce. This article explores the relationships between mobile phone users’ characteristics and their information privacy concerns from a cross-cultural perspective by analyzing the mobile phone consumers in the United States and Korea. The study collected a total of 540 usable responses, including 276 U.S. responses and 264 Korean responses. Analyses revealed that Koreans were much more active in mobile commerce activities. In general, the U.S. sample expressed significantly higher levels of information privacy concerns than those of the Korean sample. The number of years of mobile commerce experience seems to have little impact on the privacy concerns of Americans. Income does not seem to have any bearing in Americans’ mobile commerce activities. Understanding the mobile users’ demographics and their attitudes toward information privacy concerns in different cultural contexts will help mobile commerce businesses better serve global consumers.