Parental emotional warmth and adolescent internet altruism behavior: a moderated mediation model

Abstract

As a double-edged sword, the Internet is prone to breed cyber violence and bullying on the one hand, on the other hand, it can promote the expansion of altruistic behavior in cyberspace. Exploring the mechanism of generating Internet altruistic behaviors can help improve adolescents’ adaptive development and build a harmonious online environment. In light of this, this study constructed a hypothetical model of parental emotional warmth and adolescents’ Internet altruistic behaviors with gratitude trait as the mediating variable and belief in a just world as the moderating variable, in order to investigate how personal experiences, personality, and social cognition affect the practice of Internet altruistic behavior. A total of 1004 adolescents from two middle schools in China were selected for the survey. The results showed that parental emotional warmth significantly and positively affects adolescents’ Internet altruistic behaviors, while gratitude mediated this path between the two, with the mediating effect accounting for 27.07% and 24.27% of the total effect in the model of paternal and maternal emotional warmth, respectively. Moreover, in the paternal emotional warmth model, this indirect effect was moderated by belief in a just world, and the indirect effect was stronger for adolescents with lower beliefs in a just world relative to those with higher beliefs. Relative to paternal emotional warmth, belief in a just world was not significant in moderating the indirect effects of maternal emotional warmth on Internet altruistic behavior through gratitude. This research aims to provide more empirical research on the mechanisms of adolescents’ Internet altruistic behaviors and to provide more insights into the promotion of responsible and appropriate Internet use among adolescents.