Meng Wang’s research while affiliated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology and other places

The ubiquitous monitoring and collection capabilities of the IoE, as well as its innovative scenarios, have led to changes in the content and type of personal data. Personal data sensitivity, as a standard for measuring privacy attitudes, can provide a reference for the design and improvement of privacy systems. This study aims to evaluate individuals’ personal data sensitivity in the IoE context, to better understand individuals’ current privacy attitudes. This study uses a questionnaire survey to study personal data sensitivity and the antecedents affecting personal data sensitivity among 1921 Chinese citizens. Research suggests that, within the spectrum of 41 personal data categories, identifiers such as ID numbers and home addresses are deemed highly sensitive. Furthermore, within the IoE context, emerging types of personal data, including behavioural and facial recognition data, also demonstrate significant sensitivity. With respect to sensitivity levels, personal data can be categorized into four tiers: very highly sensitive data, highly sensitive data, medium sensitive data, and low sensitive data. The study also finds that perceived privacy risks, privacy concerns, and social influences have a significant impact on personal data sensitivity, and there are differences in public perception of personal data sensitivity among different genders, ages, and educational levels.

This study explores the transformative impact of a digital platform integrating social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo with social e-commerce applications such as RED on individuals' consumption behaviours. It examines how this influence reshapes personal image, builds social identity, and engages in various behaviours, particularly focusing on the social visibility of consumption during Chinese wedding celebrations. Through an online survey of 570 respondents who have hosted or plan to host wedding celebrations, we investigate whether the use of social media increases the likelihood of the social visibility of individual consumption. Our findings reveal a significant relationship between social media use and the social visibility of respondents' consumption. Moreover, a continual rise in the social visibility of respondents’ consumption is associated with increased conspicuous consumption behaviour and display. While self-expression enhances the social visibility of consumption and its impact on brand awareness, this study does not identify a moderating effect of self-expression on the relationship between the social visibility of consumption and conspicuous consumption behaviour and display. These results give insight into the evolving role of digital platforms in shaping consumption patterns, particularly in the context of significant life events like weddings in China.

With the accelerating development of social networks and the popularization of intelligent personal communication devices, live streaming has provided fluid experiences in time and space for the Chinese people, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Live streaming has enabled the real-time communication and interaction between viewer and live host, and has created a range of live hosts and new forms of business models due to the affordance of virtual currencies and gift reward mechanisms featured on live streaming platforms. Based on a questionnaire survey of 515 live viewers, this study examines the impact of the viewers’ network social presence on social support willingness and analyzes the roles of parasocial interaction and emotional response. The study reveals that network social presence has a direct positive impact on emotional, instrumental, and economic support willingness. Additionally, parasocial interaction plays a mediating role in the impact of network social presence on emotional, instrumental, and economic support willingness. Furthermore, the higher the degree of emotional response, the stronger the mediating effect of parasocial interaction on the relationship between network social presence and instrumental support willingness. Findings shed light on the potential intermediate mechanism and the boundary conditions of the influence of network social presence on the social support willingness of viewers, providing new insights on promoting the relationships between live hosts and viewers on live broadcast platforms.

Background During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the resident’s WeChat group has created a new material foundation for dialogue to occur and become a powerful platform for resident communication. This study explores the mechanism behind and the effects of residents’ WeChat group use on residents’ community trust, community attachment, and pro-community behavior. Methods An online survey questionnaire was used for data collection. The authors collected data from 500 commercial housing community residents in Wuhan, China, and analyzed the data using SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3 software. Results This study’s findings uncover that (1) residents’ usage of WeChat groups has a statistically significant and positive impact on their community trust, community attachment, and pro-community behavior; (2) community trust and community attachment both play a mediating role in the mechanism behind residents’ usage of WeChat groups in improving pro-community behavior; and (3) the transmission and united effects between community trust and community attachment form a distal mediating role. Conclusion The model systematically and comprehensively reveals the internal mechanism behind residents’ adoption of pro-community behavior. Community managers can actively participate in the resident’s WeChat group to ensure the dissemination of positive information in the community; enhance residents’ awareness of risk, community trust, and belonging; and cultivate community resilience. At the same time, community managers should also fully recognize the important transformative roles that community trust and community belonging play between the use of WeChat groups by residents and the formation of pro-community behavior. Community managers should actively establish a warm and trusting community culture, strive to create a community atmosphere with a sense of belonging, make residents develop emotional attachment to the community, and then form behavior that is beneficial to the community, greatly enhancing the resilience and self-management of the community in disaster situations.

Personal physiological data is the digital representation of physical features that identify individuals in the Internet of Everything environment. Such data includes characteristics of uniqueness, identification, replicability, irreversibility of damage, and relevance of information, and this data can be collected, shared, and used in a wide range of applications. As facial recognition technology has become prevalent and smarter over time, facial data associated with critical personal information poses a potential security and privacy risk of being leaked in the Internet of Everything application platform. However, current research has not identified a systematic and effective method for identifying these risks. Thus, in this study, we adopted the fault tree analysis method to identify risks. Based on the risks identified, we then listed intermediate events and basic events according to the causal logic, and drew a complete fault tree diagram of facial data breaches. The study determined that personal factors, data management and supervision absence are the three intermediate events. Furthermore, the lack of laws and regulations and the immaturity of facial recognition technology are the two major basic events leading to facial data breaches. We anticipate that this study will explain the manageability and traceability of personal physiological data during its lifecycle. In addition, this study contributes to an understanding of what risks physiological data faces in order to inform individuals of how to manage their data carefully and to guide management parties on how to formulate robust policies and regulations that can ensure data security.

Purpose The Chinese government hopes to achieve the goal of benefiting citizens by building a National Integrated Online Government Service Platform (NIOGSP). However, citizens' low adoption of the platform makes it difficult for the government to achieve its goal. Research on the influencing factors of citizen adoption of NIOGSP can help the government fully understand the concerns and needs of its citizens and take targeted measures to increase citizen adoption. Design/methodology/approach First, this research builds a model of the citizen adoption process, including attention, retention and motivation, based on an observational learning model. Next, research variables are determined based on social cognitive theory, literature review and real-world needs. Finally, based on the questionnaire survey and structural equation model, the influencing factors of each stage of the citizen adoption process model are studied and the relationship between the three stages of the model is verified. Findings Results show that perceived usefulness (PU) and self-efficacy (SE) positively affect attention. SE positively affects retention, while perceived privacy (PP) negatively affects retention. PU, social influence, PP and anxiety positively affect motivation. Originality/value The conclusion of this study can provide reference for governments in various countries to establish and improve online one-stop government. In addition, this study verifies the citizen adoption process model and finds that there is no obvious causal relationship between attention and retention, but both have positive effects on motivation.