A case study of the usage of social network service between college students from USA and China.

Abstract

The rapid development in momentum of social network service provides research directions both on technology and social research. In order to find out the reason of the inequality in the popularity of social network services across cultures, this report used Geert Hofstede’s culture dimension model (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation) to analyse how the cultural factors affect users’ behaviours, attitudes and usage on social network service between US and Chinese college students. The results of quantitative method showed the different cultural factors of two countries in power distance, individualism and long term orientation respectively which influenced the college students in the validity, privacy and trust concerns, social issues concerns, personal reputation, the usage requirement, the relationship between individual and group and the attitude towards social network services.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction …………………………………3

1.1. Background ………………………………………………………………….3

1.2. Research Question ………………………………………………………..4

1.3. Purpose ………………………………………………………………………5

2. Literature review …………………………..6

2.1. Choosing literatures ……………………………………………………..6

2.2. History and status quo of SNS ………………………………………..6

2.3. Cultural influences ………………………………………………………7

3. Research Method …………………………..9

3.1. Data collection ……………………………………………………………9

3.2. Cultural factors …………………………………………………………..9

3.3. Questionnaire …………………………………………………………….12

4. Results and Analysis ……………………..14

4.1. Overview …………………………………………………………………..14

4.2. Results ……………………………………………………………………..14

4.3. Analysis ……………………………………………………………………15

5. Conclusions and Future research …….20

5.1. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………….20

5.2.    Suggestions for future research …………………………………..21

6. Literature references …………………….22

7. Appendix A Questionnaire ……………..23

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