Investigating the Impact of Personality Traits of Social Network Sites Users on Information Disclosure in China: the Moderating Role of Gender

Abstract

Social network sites (SNS) are a very popular method of online communication among university students, where users are willing to share personal and private information with other users. The purpose of this research is to investigate the possible relationships between personality traits, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and information self-disclosure within SNS context. In addition, we extend our framework by investigating the moderating effect of gender on all the proposed relationships in the model. A questionnaire is developed and the convenient sampling technique is used to collect data from university students in China. Structural equation modeling approach is applied to examine the influence of personality traits on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment of SNS, which subsequently will positively influence users’ self-disclosure of information on SNS. Our results reveal that some personality traits consider SNS to be useful, while other personality traits consider SNS to be enjoyable. In addition, perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness have positive influence on users’ disclosure of information on SNS. Furthermore, our findings suggest that gender differences has produced different influences between the different relations in the model.