Understanding digital consumers' well‐being in Asia: The moderating roles of digital natives and privacy concerns

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Author: Youshin Kwak,Jeeyeon Kim,Yeolib Kim,Jeonghye Choi
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12389

SPECIAL ISSUE

Understanding digital consumers' well-being in

Asia: The moderating roles of digital natives

and privacy concerns

Youshin Kwak

1

| Jeeyeon Kim

2

| Yeolib Kim

3

|

Jeonghye Choi

1

1

Graduate Student, School of Business,

Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

2

College of Management, National Sun

Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

3

Graduate School of Technology and

Innovation Management, Ulsan National

Institute of Science and Technology,

Ulsan, South Korea

Correspondence

Jeeyeon Kim, College of Management,

National Sun Yat-sen University,

Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan.

Email: jeeyeon.kim@cm.nsysu.edu.tw

Funding information

Ministry of Science and Technology,

Taiwan, Grant/Award Number: MOST

109-2410-H-110-049 -; National Research

Foundation of Korea, Grant/Award

Number: NRF-2020S1A3A2A02093277;

Yonsei University Research Fund of 2020,

Grant/Award Number: 2020-22-0058

Abstract

As digital technologies permeate our lives, the effect of

digital device use on well-being has become a hot-button

issue. In this research, we focus on digital usage and dig-

ital shopping via online and mobile devices and investi-

gate their relationships with well-being using a public

data from South Korea. Overall, online usage and online

shopping increase well-being, whereas mobile usage

and mobile shopping decrease it. Interestingly, these

relationships are complex and idiosyncratic as including

digital natives and privacy concerns as moderators pro-

vides varied results. Among digital natives, the positive

effect of online usage on well-being decreases whereas

the negative effects of mobile usage and mobile shop-

ping on well-being increase. Furthermore, privacy con-

cerns weaken the effects of mobile usage and online

shopping on well-being.

KEYWORDS

digital shopping, privacy concerns, well-being

1|INTRODUCTION

A recent Pew report (Anderson & Rainie, 2018) has highlighted how digital activities can be a

blessing or a detriment to our daily lives. As documented in the report, the proliferation of

Received: 14 November 2019 Revised: 5 February 2021 Accepted: 21 April 2021

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12389

© 2021 American Council on Consumer Interests.

1274 J Consum Aff. 2021;55:1274–1291.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca

digital technologies has positives, allowing individuals to connect, innovate and find resources

in an efficient manner. However, there are also negatives due to the fact that digital technolo-

gies can foster shallow engagement with peers, cause psychological damage and generate

unwarranted tensions through concerns about security. Altogether, it is without a doubt that

the popularity and availability of digital technologies greatly affect our well-being.

The effects of digital technologies on well-being are complex and subtle, and fluctuations

are bound to occur (Przybylski & Weinstein, 2017). The ubiquity of digital devices facilitates

instantaneous information access and unprecedented shopping convenience, allowing users to

enjoy digitalized lifestyles that are unprecedented (Anderson & Rainie, 2018). Given the surge

in and benefits of digitalization, the well-being of today's digital consumers appears multiface-

ted since it is not only affected by digital device use but also varies by generations and individ-

ual privacy concerns. Specifically, rapid digitalization has exacerbated the digital divide across

generations. Generations are conceptually distinguished by digital natives and digital immi-

grants (Prensky, 2001) based on the assimilation of technologies shaping their thinking and

information processing (Vodanovich et al., 2010). Another issue facing digital users is privacy

breach as consumers are concerned about their personal information leaking when they are

engaged in digital spaces (Anderson & Rainie, 2018). Privacy concerns (Smith et al., 2011) aris-

ing from digital technologies would moderate these relationships because cognitive and emo-

tional appraisals are involved in gaging the extent of the concerns.

To understand digital consumers' well-being in Asia, we use South Korea as our research

context. South Korea is well known for the high Internet penetration and smartphone owner-

ship rates (Sohn, 2018). At the same time, Internet addiction, a well-publicized topic in the

media, has created a social and health crisis, especially for adolescents, as millions of teen agers

are endangered due to their pathological Internet use (Robinson, 2015). Moreover, the large-

scale personal information leakage crises, mostly by IT service companies, have alerted South

Korean digital users to be more vigilant about their digital privacy (Cho, 2014).

Given the digital-related characteristics of South Korea, we focus on digital device use

(i.e., regular usage and shopping) between online (e.g., desktops and laptops) and mobile

(e.g., smartphones and tablets) channels. We then examine online and mobile device use and

their distinct relationships with well-being. We further seek to understand the moderating roles

of digital natives and privacy concerns. To be specific, we propose and test the hypotheses to

address the following research questions:

•How do digital usage and digital shopping affect digital consumers' well-being?

•Do online and mobile devices affect well-being differently?

•Are the answers to the aforementioned two questions affected by two moderators: digital

natives and privacy concerns?

Analyzing survey and diary data from a South Korea public database, we obtain empirical

findings as follows. First, digital (i.e., online and mobile) usage and shopping behaviors result in

differential effects on consumers' well-being due to their device features. Second, overindulgence

of digital lifestyles by digital natives harbors heavy reliance on the devices beyond their practical

use, including using them as leisure tools, thereby resulting in difficulties to use digital devices

for productivity. Third, the rise in privacy concerns weakens the effects of digital device use since

those concerns act as a barrier for both the regular usagedigital devices and their shopping.

This study thus fills a gap in the existing research on well-being in the digital context

beyond the general state of well-being. In specific, it contributes to prior studies by empirically

KWAK ET AL.1275