Title: Toward an understanding of individualism, collectivism and technostress on social network sites: evidence from China and Germany

Authors: Nils Bernard Bienek; Christina Gross; Richard Lackes; Markus Siepermann

Addresses: Department of Business and Economics, Professorship for Business Informatics, TU Dortmund University, August-Schmidt-Straße 1, 44227 Dortmund, Germany ' Department of Business and Economics, Professorship for Business Informatics, TU Dortmund University, August-Schmidt-Straße 1, 44227 Dortmund, Germany ' Department of Business and Economics, Professorship for Business Informatics, TU Dortmund University, August-Schmidt-Straße 1, 44227 Dortmund, Germany ' Professorship for Business Informatics, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, University of Applied Sciences, Wiesenstraße 14, 35390 Gießen, Germany

Abstract: Social network sites (SNSs) are popular worldwide, but despite the ongoing process of globalisation, usage varies widely from country to country. Reasons for this are manifold, and require further research. In addition to different platforms, cultural differences can also lead to different levels of usage. This paper aims to examine the different factors which influence SNS usage. For this, a survey of 281 Chinese and German users was conducted. While China is the archetype of a collectivist society, Germany is considered to be more individualistic. The results show that social reasons and technostress (TS) influence usage behaviour. In particular, the influence of social reasons on subjective norms and further on perceived usefulness towards SNSs is greater among Chinese users. Interestingly, TS seems to be non-culturally influenced.

Keywords: Facebook; Qzone; Renren; Germany; China; technostress; social network sites; SNSs; individualism; collectivism.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2024.137767

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2024 Vol.23 No.3, pp.324 - 343

Received: 26 Aug 2021
Accepted: 05 Aug 2022
Published online: 05 Apr 2024 *

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