"To Share Or Not To Share,that’s A Question":Research On The Mechanism Of College Students’ Online Information Sharing Behavior

In the age of "We Media" online information sharing is the most common behavior of individuals.And it is also influenced by many factors based on social relationships.Especially,in the post-epidemic era,public crisis events have occurred more frequently,cyberspace is surging,and populism is on the rise.Thus,it is of much theoretical and practical value to discuss and evaluate the formation mechanism of online information sharing behaviors among individuals.Based on these understandings,this paper started with the classical model of the theory of planned behavior,through an overall introduction of perceived risk and perceived benefits,we reconceptualized and operationalized of the specific variables,and comprehensive analyzed the formation mechanism of individual social media information sharing behavior.Specifically,this paper discussed the impact of perceived risk,perceived benefit and interpersonal trust on the willingness and behavior of WeChat information sharing among college students.Based on the existing mature scales,we constructed new questionnaires that meet the needs of our study.We developed and used online questionnaires to gather the statistics from college students in Jiangxi province.Based on 566 questionnaires,the study further evaluated the connections between all the variables by Pearson correlation analysis,OSL multi-factor regression analysis and Bootstrap method.Overall,we found that college students often use WeChat to share information;information sharing is significantly positively correlated.More specifically,information sharing is significantly negatively correlated with perceived psychological risk,privacy risk and social risk.Besides,information sharing is also significantly positively correlated with perceived benefits,information sharing is significantly positively correlated with perceived psychological benefits and social benefits.Moreover,interpersonal trust is significantly positively correlated with information sharing of college students.In the meantime,we found that interpersonal trust plays a moderating role between individuals’ perceived risk,perceived benefits,and WeChat information sharing.High level of interpersonal trust reduces the negative impact of perceived risk on information sharing and amplifies the positive impact of perceived benefits on information sharing.Low level of interpersonal trust amplifies the negative impact of perceived risk on information sharing and:reduces the positive impact of perceived benefits on information sharing.The findings suggest that individuals tend to ignore the perceived risk when share information within close relationship.However,when sharing information within general social circles or with strangers,individuals will consider more risky consequences based on their own protection and other factors.Therefore,interpersonal trust is a more important factor than the perceived risks and benefits when considering college students’ online information sharing behavior.Finally,it should be noted that our relevant findings are all based on factors at the individual level.How these micro factors can be derived from the individual "attitude-behavior" model and applied to the current social phenomenon(such as group polarization)is worthy of further discussion in the follow-up research.