A Study of Reasons for Self-Disclosure on Social Media among Chinese COVID-19 Patients: Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior Model

Abstract

Background: With a massive population of internet users, China has witnessed a shift in the behavior of social media users towards the COVID-19 pandemic, transitioning from reticence to frequent sharing of information in response to changing circumstances and policy adjustments of the disease. This study aims to explore how perceived benefits, perceived risks, subjective norms, and self-efficacy influence the intentions of Chinese COVID-19 patients to disclose their medical history on social media, and thus to examine their actual disclosure behaviors. Methods: Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Privacy Calculus Theory (PCT), a structural equation model was constructed to analyze the influence paths among perceived benefits, perceived risks, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions to disclose medical history on social media among Chinese COVID-19 patients. A total of 593 valid surveys were collected via a randomized internet-based survey, which constituted a representative sample. Firstly, we used SPSS 26.0 to conduct reliability and validity analyses of the questionnaire, as well as the tests of demographic differences and correlations between variables. Next, Amos 26.0 was employed to construct and test the model fit degree, identify the relationships among latent variables, and conduct path tests. Results: Our findings revealed the following: (1) There were significant gender differences in the self-disclosure behaviors of medical history on social media among Chinese COVID-19 patients. (2) Perceived benefits had a positive effect on self-disclosure behavioral intentions (β = 0.412, p < 0.001); perceived risks had a positive effect on self-disclosure behavioral intentions (β = 0.097, p < 0.05); subjective norms had a positive effect on self-disclosure behavioral intentions (β = 0.218, p < 0.001); self-efficacy had a positive effect on self-disclosure behavioral intentions (β = 0.136, p < 0.001). (3) Self-disclosure behavioral intentions had a positive effect on disclosure behaviors (β = 0.356, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study, by integrating TPB and PCT to examine the influencing factors of the self-disclosure behaviors among Chinese COVID-19 patients on social media, found that perceived risks, perceived benefits, subjective norms, and self-efficacy had a positive influence on the self-disclosure intentions of Chinese COVID-19 patients. We also found that self-disclosure intentions, in turn, positively influenced disclosure behaviors. However, we did not observe a direct influence of self-efficacy on disclosure behaviors. Our study provides a sample of the application of TPB in the context of social media self-disclosure behavior among patients. It also introduces a novel perspective and potential approach for individuals to address the feelings of fear and shame related to illness, particularly within the context of collectivist cultural values.

Rational or altruistic: the impact of social media information exposure on Chinese youth’s willingness to donate blood

“…In the field of health research, the theory of rational behavior is an important classical framework to explaining and analyzing individual health behaviors, and the theory of rational behavior has good explanatory and predictive power for individual-specific behavioral intentions and behavioral decisions. In existing studies, the theory of planned behavior is mostly found in the management of smoking surveys ( 23 ), consumer psychoanalysis ( 24 ), psychoanalysis ( 25 ), infectious disease control ( 26 ), health screening ( 27 ), health information sharing ( 28 ), vaccination ( 29 , 30 ), and neocoronavirus pneumonia ( 31 , 32 ) studies, etc.…”

Generation Z's perception of privacy on social media: Examining the impact of personalized advertising, interpersonal relationships, reference group dynamics, social isolation, and anxiety on self-disclosure willingness

“…Despite the growing number of analyses in the investigated issue, there is still a lack of studies dealing with the factors that influence the willingness of Generation Z to share personal information on social media Nabity-Grover et al, 2023;Trifiro, 2023;Wang et al, 2023a) or with the impact of privacy concerns on personalization and the subsequent reaction of consumers to data protection (Lee et al, 2022), even though a wide range of personal and contextual factors, such as network externalities resulting from the size of the platform, trust, or sensitivity to misuse of personal data, play a decisive role in the process of self-disclosure (Kim et al, 2019a;Lim & Shim, 2022). Moreover, this phenomenon is significant among Generation Z, which is considered to be natively technologically savvy.…”