Behavioral Intention in Social Networking Sites Ethical Dilemmas

Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561
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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh
Full length article
Behavioral intention in social networking sites ethical dilemmas: An

extended model based on Theory of Planned Behavior
Hosein Jafarkarimi a, c, *, Robab Saadatdoost b, c, Alex Tze Hiang Sim c, Jee Mei Hee d
a
Department of Computer, Damavand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Damavand, Iran

Department of Computer and Information Technology, Parand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Parand, Iran
c
Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
d
Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
b
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 12 May 2015
Received in revised form
8 April 2016
Accepted 13 April 2016
Available online 22 April 2016
The expanding use of social networking sites (SNSs) and their exible functionalities allow individuals to
use these sites in unexpected and unethical ways. SNS users face ethical dilemmas each day and they
need to decide how to behave in these cases. The aim of this study was to identify the inuential factors
that have an impact on individuals' ethical decision-making and propose a model of the factors that are
signicant in the ethical decision-making process in the SNS context. This study employed the Theory of
Planned Behavior (TPB) and included personal normative beliefs, moral intensity, perceived threat of
legal punishment to the main constructs of TPB namely attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral
control to predict the behavioral intention using a scenario based questionnaire. The moderating effects
of several factors, including age, gender, level of income, ego strength, locus of control and religion, were
investigated for the probable effect on the proposed model. Derived from a designed procedure, several
scenarios were constructed, of which four were selected to be embedded in the survey instrument. With
441 returned questionnaires in hand, the collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares
estructural equation modeling technique. The results showed attitude to be the most inuential factor,
followed by subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, personal normative beliefs, and moral intensity. Level of education, age, and scenario also showed a signicant effect on the relation between
predictors and behavioral intention.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Ethical behavior
Theory of Planned Behavior
Social networking sites
Computer ethics
1. Introduction
During recent years, Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have
become a major communication vehicle in all societies. Facebook
alone has more than 2.2 billion users which means one-third of the
world's population are using it (Edwards, 2014). The uptake of SNSs
has attracted many concerns about the different ethical issues
regarding their usage, such as employee surveillance (Byrnside,
2007; Rothberg, 2008), application of users' data for advertising
purposes (Reynolds, 2011), privacy (Hull, Lipford, & Latulipe, 2011),
identity theft (Bilge, Strufe, Balzarotti, & Kirda, 2009), inappropriate
prole content (Peluchette & Karl, 2009), cyberstalking (Haron &
Yusof, 2010), cyberbullying (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010; Huang &
Chou, 2013; Kwan & Skoric, 2013), cyberloang (Krishnan, Lim, &
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: karimi@damavandiau.ac.ir (H. Jafarkarimi).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.04.024
0747-5632/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Teo, 2010; Liberman, Seidman, Mckenna, & Buffardi, 2011; Tang &
Austin, 2009), self-disclosure (Livingstone, 2008) spreading rumors and false news (Leitch & Warren, 2009) and SNS addiction
(Balci and Glc, 2013). SNSs are among the powerful Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) tools that link people to each
other and provide a vast range of information and entertainment on
the Internet. This potential makes them a ground for new ethical
challenges (Light and Mcgrath, 2010).
In order to increase the moral responsibilities that consequently
cause ethical actions, the only option is to help individuals' development through initial stages to higher stages of moral development (Kohlberg, 1975). This aim could be achieved by moral
discussions and education based on ethical dilemmas. Making
ethical decisions is a complicated process which an individual goes
through to come out with a do or don't intention. However, this
might be a strenuous task since there is neither generally recognized approach to teaching ethical issues nor a generally accepted
theory of Computer Ethics (Floridi & Sanders, 2002). In such case,
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H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561
the most pragmatic way may be a behavioristic approach (Namlu &

Odabasi, 2007).
Unethical behavior among SNS users is affecting Malaysian society like the rest of the world. Individuals' intentions to behave
unethically in SNSs are more accepted than other kinds of unethical
behaviors. The reason may lie in the ease with which the unethical
behavior can be carried out and other factors such as opportunity,
belief systems, or cultural or social elements. However, the lack of
attempts to systematically theorize unethical behavior in the
context of SNSs leads preventive plans and actions to fail. This
failure affects the society and people who are bound to the Internet
and other ICTs. Although some researchers have tried to propose
models to show the important factors that lead people to behave
unethically, few studies have been conducted in Asia or Malaysia,
specically in the SNS context. Malaysia's multi-cultural population
and the different norms and beliefs among its citizens make it a
unique eld of study for social and cultural-oriented research.
Ethical studies are contingent on the cultural and social environment. This research identies the important factors and their level
of impact on unethical behaviors in the SNS context. The resulting
contribution to knowledge will provide planners with useful
guidelines on how to promote an ethical environment in the use of
SNSs and other ICTs with the potential to affect the whole society.
This research focuses on the factors that have an inuence on
students' ethical decision-making process when using SNSs. The
aim is to identify the factors that drive individuals to act ethically or
unethically in the SNS context in order to propose a model of ethical
behavioral intention in the case of SNS ethical dilemmas. In this
regard, this research looks for answers to the following key
questions:
i. What are the important factors that make individuals intend
to carry out unethical behavior with computers?
ii. How to measure the relationships between inuential factors and intention of unethical behavior?
iii. What are the strength of the relationships between inuential factors and intention of unethical behavior?
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
a theoretical background of this research is provided. It contains a
short review of SNSs in addition to Theory of Planned Behavior
which is the theory which this research is based on. In Section 3,
some related works are presented which is the precursor of hypothesis development in Section 4. In Section 5, the method used in
this research is elaborated. Section 6 presents the results of data
analysis which is followed by a discussion in Section 7. Sections 8
and 9 is devoted to limitation and implications of this study.
Finally, conclusion and future work is presented in Section 10.
Theoretical Background.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Social networking sites
Boyd and Ellison (2007. p.2) dened SNSs as Web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public
prole within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users
with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their
list of connections and those made by others within the system. The
nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site
to site. SNS are the websites who aim to build up a community
over the Internet which enables its users to remove time differences, cultural and geographical barriers to interact with others
(Reynolds, 2011). SNSs enable their users to share information,
opinions, interests, insights and experiences with people they may
know, like their family and friends, or even those who they do not
know and want to make new personal and professional relationship with. The most popular SNS is Facebook which has more than 1
billion active users (Whittaker, 2012). Other popular SNSs are
Google, Twitter, Qzone (popular in China), LinkedIn, Instagram,
etc.
2.2. Theory of Planned Behavior
Different theories and models have been proposed to examine
the relationship between different factors and behaviors (Olson &
Zanna, 1993). Among them, Wicker (1969) looked at the relationship of attitude and behavior and concluded that these two probably have no relation. Out of frustration with traditional attitudebehavior researches that much of them found weak correlation
between attitude and performance of a volitional behavior (Hale,
Householder, & Greene, 2002. p. 259), Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)
proposed the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) which aimed to
explain volitional behaviors. Later, they extended TRA and the
outcome was the TPB (Ajzen, 1985). TRA and TPB became the most
widely researched models of behavior (Armitage & Conner, 2001).
TPB suggests that Attitude, Subjective Norms (SN) and Perceived
Behavioral Control (PBC) are good predictors of intention and
consequently of behavior. The TPB claims that the performance of
deliberate intentional behaviors could be predicted with high accuracy from intentions and perceptions of behavioral control
(Ajzen, 1991). As Ajzen (1985) suggested, this theory could be
applied to all volitional activities and behaviors such as skiing,
swimming and mountain climbing. TPB can be used to predict
specic behaviors across occasions, situations and different forms
of action. TPB claims that intention to a great extent inuences the
actual behavior (Beck & Ajzen, 1991). The ve constituents of TPB
can be dened as below:
i. Behavior is an individual's act in a certain case which is the
result of intention and PBC, such that a desired intention will
only lead to behavior if PBC is strong.
ii. Intention is the core element of TPB and refers to individuals'
readiness to perform a given behavior.
iii. Attitude refers to the evaluation of an individual about the
question of how favorable or unfavorable an act is. It depends
on an individual's beliefs and the evaluation of those beliefs.
iv. SN is dened as an individual's perception about what most
others who are important to him or her think he or she
should do.
v. PBC refers to the perceived easiness or difculty of an act to
be done.
Armitage and Conner (2001) conducted a review of 185 studies
and found evidence to support the TPB as an efcient predictor of
intention and behavior. In addition, many studies claim that this
theory is appropriate in ICT contexts (Banerjee, Cronan, & Jones,
1998; Chatterjee, 2008; Inedo, 2012; Leonard, Cronan, & Kreie,
2004; Namlu & Odabasi, 2007). Hence, the TPB is applied in this
study to address the factors that are important in people's behavior
in the SNS context.
In line with TPB's variables, and based on a literature review,
another three constructs namely personal normative belief (PNB),
Moral Intensity (MI) and perceived threat of legal punishment
(PTLP) were included to be embedded in the TPB to investigate
behavioral intention in SNS dilemma cases. PNB refers to an individual's feeling about his or her moral obligation to do or not to
do an act. MI is a construct that relates to issues in terms of their
perceived moral signicance (Jones, 1991). Finally, PTLP is dened
as the probability of legal punishment in the case of doing an act
and the perception of the severity and impact on the individual's

life if they should do a certain act and be punished for it (Grasmick
& Green, 1980).
3. Related work
In the eld of ethics and SNSs, ethical issues are well discussed
in earlier studies. Light and Mcgrath (2010) focused on Facebook
and through a qualitative approach over a two-year period, highlighted some ethical issues that are present in that particular
context. Guseh, Brendel, and Brendel (2009) pointed to ethical
challenges facing the patient-doctor relationship which are caused
by the popularity of SNSs and discussion forums. Some scholars
studied the ethics of research in SNSs (e.g. Farmer, Holt, Cook, &
Hearing, 2009; Kadushin, 2005; Zimmer, 2010). In this topic,
Moreno, Fost, and Christakis (2008) discussed the probability of
SNS usage for conducting health researches while the value of these
researches might be questionable in terms of condentiality, privacy, fair subject selection and informed consent. Shore, Halsey,
Shah, Crigger, and Douglas (2010), Bennett (2009) and Thompson
et al. (2008) highlighted the threats of SNSs for professionalism
and how SNSs can raise ethical issues regarding professional conducts. Clark and Roberts (2010) shed light on the employers' use of
SNSs for human resource practices and the ethical issues behind it.
This issue was also echoed in others research (Brown & Vaughn,
nchez Abril, Levin, & Del
2011; Davison, Maraist, & Bing, 2011; Sa
Riego, 2012; Trottier & Lyon, 2012) which highlighted the ethical
concern behind the use of SNSs for employee surveillances. These
and other researches are done on the ethical issues of SNSs but not
much has been conducted on the factors that are important for the
people to engage with ethical issues in SNSs.
Although SNSs are relatively new technologies and behavioral
studies in SNS ethics are not that rich, a lot of researches have been
conducted in the eld of other ICT's ethical behavior which are a
ground for current research. In line with the TRA and TPB, different
researchers proposed specic models of ethical behavior in the
context of IT. A psycho-social model of software piracy was proposed (Eining & Christensen, 1991). Simpson, Banerjee, and
Simpson (1994) proposed a model of motivating factors of softlifting. Banerjee et al. (1998) presented an IT ethical behavioral
model which used a different set of constructs in addition to the
TRA constructs to predict an individual's intention in given scenarios. Based on this model and its scenarios, different models were
proposed in the IT context (e.g. Cronan, Leonard, & Kreie, 2005;
Cronan & Douglas, 2006; Leonard & Cronan, 2001; Leonard et al.,
2004). In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of
literature on the use of TPB to propose IT ethical models ranging
from general ethical decision-making models (Chatzidakis &
Mitussis, 2007; Haines & Leonard, 2007; Leonard & Paul Cronan,
2005) to softlifting (Aleassa, Pearson, & Mcclurg, 2011; Chen, Pan,
& Pan, 2009; Kuo & Hsu, 2001; Liao, Lin, & Liu, 2010; Peace,
Galletta, & Thong, 2003; Tan, 2002; Yoon, 2011), using music and
movie piracy (D'astous, Colbert, & Montpetit, 2005; Ingram &
Hinduja, 2008; Larose & Kim, 2006; Morton & Koufteros, 2008;
Robertson, Mcneill, Green, & Roberts, 2012; Shang, Chen, & Chen,
2008; Wang and Mcclung, 2011; Wingrove, Korpas, & Weisz,
2010) committing online harassment (Heirman & Walrave, 2012;
Li, 2005; Lwin, Li, & Ang, 2012; Runions, 2013), and internet
abuse in workplace (Askew, 2012; Lee, Lee, & Kim, 2007;
Mahatanankoon, 2006; Strader, Fichtner, Simpson, & Clayton,
2011; Wang, Tian, & Shen, 2013).
All researchers suggest that the relationship between individuals' intention and a set of factors exists in different elds of IT.
Although a considerable amount of literature has been published
on these topics, not much has been done in the context of SNSs and
547
the vast amount of dilemmas faced by their users every day. This
study focuses on SNSs and the probable dilemmas that may happen
to any individuals who use it on a daily basis and investigates the
role of different factors that have an effect on individuals' behavioral intention. To this end, it is necessary to discover the probable
factors that hypothetically could inuence people's behavioral
intention. For this purpose, the related models in the eld of ICT
were reviewed and the relevant factors were extracted to be used in
the proposed conceptual model. Hence, the main objectives of our
research are:
i. To identify the important factors that inuence an individual's intention to behave unethically in SNSs.
ii. To design a scenario-based instrument to measure the relation of the factors and behavioral intention.
iii. To propose and evaluate a general model for unethical use of
SNSs among students.
In comparison with research efforts found in the literature, our
work has the following signicances. Firstly, Surveys reect that the
teaching of online manners is not taken seriously in Malaysia. According to the Global Youth Online Behavior Survey, conducted by
Microsoft (2012), only 18% of Malaysian parents teach online
manners to their children which is far below the average of the
countries included in the survey (39%). This reects the gap in the
felt signicance of Computer Ethics (CE) in Malaysia and other
countries. To address this issue, it is important to have solutions
based on Malaysian culture instead of borrowing strategies from
studies conducted in other contexts. Other solutions may not work
in different cultures. The present study was carried out in Malaysia
which is considered as one of the important countries in Asia in the
eld of ICT. Secondly, this research model investigates a set of
moderators which were not included in one place in previous
studies. The investigated variables altogether can be considered as
a comprehensive set of constructs in comparison with earlier
studies. In addition, this research is among the pioneering works in
the eld of CE in the context of SNS in Malaysia. It is also among
very few attempts to understand inuential factors of unethical
behavior in the context of SNSs in the world. The ndings of this
research will provide some theoretical information to understand
the signicant factors that cause ethical or unethical behavior in
ethical dilemma cases in the context of SNSs. The outcomes of this
study can support the development of educational plans to increase
the level of awareness among people to control the rate of unethical
behavior using ICT. As well, the outcomes of this study can help to
improve solutions for security and privacy concerns that are one of
the main issues in CE.
4. Hypothesis development
The actual behavior of people in ethical dilemma cases, especially in the SNS context, is almost impossible to observe. As there is
a need to see their actions when facing these dilemmas, and due to
the fact that it is not possible to observe individuals' decisions in
ethical dilemma cases, this research employed designed scenarios
to check individual intentions in the presented scenarios. The
following hypotheses were formed to investigate the impact of a set
of variables and unethical behavioral intention. These hypotheses
are the basis for the structured equation model of unethical
behavior in SNS context.
4.1. Attitude
Although some researchers have reported attitude as an insignicant factor in TPB (Banerjee et al., 1998), many researchers claim
548
that attitude is reliable for predicting intention (Ajzen and Madden,

1986; Arvola et al., 2008; Beck & Ajzen, 1991; Chiang, Sun, Wuttke,
& Rainer, 2009; Cox, 2012; Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn, & Hughes, 2009;
Durndell & Haag, 2002; Olson & Zanna, 1993; Paradice, 1990).
Attitude refers to the evaluation by an individual of how favorable
or unfavorable an act is (Ajzen, 1991). It was presented in TRA
(Ajzen & Fishbein, 1969; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and emphasized in
its extension, TPB (Ajzen, 1991). Ajzen and Fishbein (1969) showed
that attitude depends on an individual's beliefs and the evaluation
of those beliefs. Attitude is also inuenced by judgments of the
ethicality of an act (Ellis & Grifth, 2000) and has its roots in
people's characteristics and their moral development (Kohlberg,
1975). It is expected that people's unethical behavioral intention
will be more likely when they are in favor of unethical behaviors.
Thus, it is hypothesized that:
H1. Attitude has a positive effect on individuals' behavioral
intentions.
4.2. Subjective norms

Ajzen (1991) states that personal considerations may reduce the
effect of SN. Sheppard, Jon, and Warshaw (1988) believes that SN is
the weakest construct in TPB and shows less importance in predicting
individuals' intentions. Based on this claim, some scholars have
omitted SN from their studies and replaced it with PNB (Banerjee
et al., 1998; Leonard et al., 2004; Sheppard et al., 1988; Sparks,
Shepherd, Wieringa, & Zimmermanns, 1995). However, following a
review of 30 behavior studies, Tramow and Finlay (1996) stated that
although the impact of SN is not as much as attitude, it still has an
impact on people's intention and it depends on the context. In the
review research, Tramow and Finlay (1996) found evidence to show
that there are people who are under the control of attitude and there
are people who are more inuenced by SN. In line with this view,
other scholars claim that SN is still important for predicting individuals' intentions (Chan, Woon, & Kankanhalli, 2005; Chatterjee,
2008; Cox, 2012; Johnston & Warkentin, 2010; Knapp, Marshall,
Rainer, & Ford, 2006) and its poor performance may lie in its measurement. Armitage and Conner (2001) stated that the poor performance of SN as a construct lies in the weakness of its measurement
since many researchers employ single item measures to measure it.
Reviewing 185 TPB studies, Armitage and Conner (2001) showed a
reasonably strong relationship between SN and intention when researchers use multi-item measures. Hence, in this research, SN is
examined in order to identify whether or not it is important in the
SNS ethical behavior context. It is expected that people will engage in
unethical behaviors or unethical activities more probably when these
are more acceptable to people who are important to them. Hence, it is
hypothesized that:
H2. Subjective norms have a positive effect on individuals'
behavioral intentions.
4.3. Perceived behavioral control

Madden, Ellen, and Ajzen (1992) states that if people could
deliberately control a behavior in a certain scenario, the effect of the
PBC construct could be omitted. In fact, this factor is only important
for those actions for which the individual is not in full volitional
control (Armitage & Conner, 2001). For instance, when somebody
does not want to watch movies, it is not important how easy it is for
her to download pirated movies. On the other hand, while somebody intends to download pirated movies and there is no barrier to
prevent her from doing it, PBC will be the simplicity of access to
websites that provide these movies. It is expected that people

engage more in those behaviors that seem to be easier to achieve
(Bandura, 2006). Hence, it is hypothesized that:
H3. Perceived behavioral control has a positive effect on individuals' behavioral intentions.
4.4. Personal normative beliefs
PNB refers to an individual's feeling about his or her moral
obligation to do or not to do an act. There are some doubts about
the importance of this factor (Godin, 1993; Schwartz & Tessler,
1972). To check the claims regarding the inuence of SN and PNB
in SNS ethical behavior context, in the present study, PNB in
addition to SN were included to investigate their role in individuals'
behavioral intention. It is expected that people engage less in unethical activities to which they feel morally obligated. Hence, it is
hypothesized that:
H4. Personal normative beliefs have a negative effect on individuals' behavioral intentions.
4.5. Moral intensity

MI is a multi-dimensional construct which is dened as the
characteristics of a moral issue in a certain situation (Jones, 1991).
Jones (1991) suggests six different dimensions for this construct:
magnitude of consequences (the overall harm that can be done to
victims as a result of an act); probability of effect (the probability of
harm that a certain act can have on victims); temporal immediacy
(the length of time that a certain act affects others); social
consensus (the degree of social agreement over an act); proximity
(the belief about how close the effect of a certain behavior is to the
individual who conducted it); and concentration of effect (the
number of people affected by an act of given magnitude). Similar to
research by Tan (2002), the rst four components of MI were
concluded to be important in this research's context. As social
consensus can be inferred from SN, the components of MI included
in the present research were magnitude of consequences, probability of effect and temporal immediacy. It is expected that people
engage less in unethical activities that they feel have higher MI.
Hence, it is hypothesized that:
H5. Moral intensity has a negative effect on individuals' behavioral intentions.
4.6. Perceived threat of legal punishment
PTLP is dened as the probability of legal punishment in the case
of doing an act and the perception of the severity and impact on the
individual's life if they should do a certain act and be punished for it
(Grasmick & Green, 1980). Most people try to avoid actions that are
prohibited by law and as the law becomes more severe, its impact
on people's behavior becomes stronger (Bommer, Gratto,
Gravander, & Tuttle, 2013). In line with this idea, several researchers have proposed this variable as an inuential factor that
affects individuals' intentions (Grasmick & Green, 1980; Morton &
Koufteros, 2008; Paternoster, Saltzman, Waldo, & Chiricos, 1983).
To this end, PTLP is also included in the model in this research in
order to assess its impact on behavioral intention. It is expected that
people engage less in unethical behaviors that can be traced and
punished by law. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:
H6. Perceived threat of legal punishment has a negative effect on
individuals' behavioral intentions.
4.7. Moderating effects

In the process of decision making in ethical dilemmas, there are
some variables that theoretically moderate the impact of other
variables on the intention (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2013).
These variables are called moderator variables or simply moderators (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The moderating effect happens when
the moderator affects the strength or direction of a relationship
between a dependent and independent variable (Hair, Hult, Ringle,
& Sarstedt, 2013). Based on the literature in the eld of ethical
behavioral models, the variables of ego strength, Locus of Control
(LOC), religion, gender, SNS addiction, age, citizenship and level of
education, were selected to check whether or not they have a
moderating effect. Since the probable inuence of these variables in
the proposed model are rather exploratory, no hypothesis were
proposed and the probable impact of each of them on proposed
hypotheses were investigated one by one.
4.7.1. Ego strength
Ego Strength refers to individual's conviction strength and selfregulation skills (Barron, 1953). Individuals who have higher ego
strength are expected to resist impulses and follow their conviction
more than people with lower ego strength (Banerjee et al., 1998).
Trevino (1986) suggests ego strength is an important factor that
inuences people's intentions as a moderator. Other researchers
have also included ego strength in their analyses and investigated
its moderating effect. (e.g. Leonard & Cronan, 2001; Leonard et al.,
2004; Simpson et al., 1994). It is expected that ego strength moderates the relationship between constructs and intention.
4.7.2. Locus of control
LOC is the extent to which a person perceives that consequences
are the results of his or her own behavior instead of outside forces
that may occur independent from his or her own action (Rotter,
1966). LOC in an individual could be conceptualized as either internal or external (Rotter, 1990). With the internal concept of LOC,
people believe that they have control over their lives and with the
external concept, they believe that their acts and decisions are
controlled by factors such as their environment, fate and chance
over which they have no control (Kormanik & Rocco, 2009). This
perception is not all or nothing and there could be varied degrees
to which an individual believes in the role of internal and external
forces. It is believed that LOC has major signicance in the nature of
the learning process in different situations and causes individual
differences among different people regarding the level of personal
control attributed to reward in the same situation (Rotter, 1966).
Therefore, several researchers have investigated its role in ethical
behavioral decision making (Banerjee et al., 1998; Cox, 2012;
Leonard & Cronan, 2001).
4.7.3. Religion
There is no need to illustrate the relation between religion and
ethics. Religions often have much to say about ethical behavior,
either directly or by implication (Adam, 2010; Bergmann, Blindow,
& Ott, 2013; Bynum, 2010; Conroy & Emerson, 2004b; Helm, 1999;
Murphy, 1997; Weaver & Agle, 2002). In this study, individuals'
ethical viewpoint is included and without any judgment about
their claim, its moderating impact in the model is investigated. This
has been done before in other research settings (Conroy &
Emerson, 2004a) and the multi-cultural and multi-faith context
of students in Malaysia justies its inclusion in this research.
4.7.4. Gender
Different researchers have discovered that gender matters in CE
(Adam, 2001, 2002, 2005; Adam & Ofori-Amanfo, 2000; Herring,
549
1996; Mohamed, Karim, & Hussein, 2012). Peterson, Rhoads, and

Vaught (2001) reported that, in the younger age group in their
study, the females demonstrated a higher level of ethical beliefs,
while in the older age group, men were slightly more ethical.
Kavuk, Keser, and Teker (2011) also found that gender in addition to
other factors has an effect on ethical behavior in the cyber world.
4.7.5. Age
Based on Kohlberg's (1975) theory of moral development, it is
expected that older people are more ethical. This was supported in
other research where it has been shown that age does matter in
ethical decision making and that older people are subject to less
inuence from external factors (Peterson et al., 2001). As a result,
other scholars have included age as an inuential variable in ethical
decision making and examined its role (Deshpande, 1997; Gupta,
Swanson, & Cunningham, 2010; Honeycutt, Glassman, Zugelder,
& Karande, 2001; Moores & Chang, 2006; Weeks, Moore,
Mckinney, & Longenecker, 1999).
4.7.6. SNS addiction

Since TPB is a valid theory in activities involving volitional
control, a factor such as addiction might affect the behavior (Ajzen,
2005). In the current study the inclusion of SNS addiction might be
effective to see whether or not it can affect moral intention.
Although the only formal behavioral addiction which is considered
as a psychiatric disorder so far is pathological gambling
(Andreassen, Torsheim, Brunborg, & Pallesen, 2012), different attempts have been made to study other potential behavioral addictions including SNS addiction (Kuss & Grifths, 2011). In this
research it is hypothesized that SNS addiction moderates the
relation between different factors and intention to behave.
4.7.7. Citizenship
Since students in the sample were from different countries, we
were able to compare the results based on subsamples from
different countries. This aimed to understand whether or not differences in culture may have an impact on the unethical behavioral
intention in context of SNS.
4.7.8. Level of education

Although it is proven that moral development happens through
moral education (Killen & Smetana, 2005; Kohlberg, 1975; Rest,
1979), it is not that clear whether or not the level of education
has any impact on the process of ethical decision making. Level of
education and its impact is reported by some scholars to make a
difference on behavior (De Bildt, Sytema, Kraijer, Sparrow, &
Minderaa, 2005; Organization, 2012; Peterman & Kennedy, 2003).
It is expected that more educated people are more ethical
(Deshpande, 1997). Since the focus of this research is not on the
ethicality or unethicality of a behavior, level of education is
considered as a moderator to study whether or not students with
different level of education prioritize independent variables
differently when it comes to unethical behavior.
This study's conceptual model is presented in Fig. 1. In this
model, the aim is to present the important factors that inuence
individuals' intentions when they face an ethical dilemma. The core
of this model is the TPB constructs that are presented in line with
other constructs in the inner square. The moderating effects also
are presented in a way to show their impact on the process of decision making.
550
Fig. 1. Unethical behavioral model in the context of SNSs.
5. Method
5.1. Instrument design
Same as previous studies on ethical behavior, a questionnaire
was designed to measure discussed constructs to capture each individual's intention to behave unethically in a provided SNS related
scenario. Scenarios included previously studied ethical issues like
privacy, cyberbullying, accuracy etc. and 23 possible dilemma cases
were designed and presented to a panel of experts including 4
psychologists, 3 IS professors and 6 PhD students in the eld of IS.
The panel was presented with a questionnaire which asked them to
evaluate the scenarios in terms of ethicality and importance to this
research. Based on this procedure 4 scenarios were selected to be
included in the survey (Appendix A). In line with the scenarios, this
questionnaire employed several previously validated measures and
instruments which are presented in Appendix B.
The designed questionnaire which included demographic
questions, scenario and its related questions, Ego test and LOC test,
were presented to 3 IS Professors for content validity. After revising
the requested changes, a pilot test was done on 48 individuals who
were selected on a convenience basis, each answering 2 sets of
questions regarding 2 different scenarios and the questionnaire
was nalized for the main survey. Due to the complaints received
by respondents due to the length of questionnaire, it was discovered that more than one scenario in a questionnaire can decrease
the quality of answers and hence, only one scenario was presented
to each respondent in the main survey.
independent constructs, the suggested sample size was 98. Since

there were four scenarios and consequently four questionnaires
designed in this research, four quotas of respondents needed to be
lled. In each quota, 98 responses were considered as suggested by
the G*power software. Taking the upper bound of all the mentioned
strategies, in this research the aim was set to 98 respondents in
each subgroup and 394 in total. In order to be sure about having
this number of good responses, 115 (15% more than what was
needed) questionnaires in each quota were distributed which
means 460 in total as the nal sample size. After removing
incomplete and poorly completed response, 441 survey responses
were left. The sample consisted of 49% female and 51% male with
the average age of 24.7 years. 52.5% of respondents' current level of
education was Bachelor, 26.5% Master, 12.9% PhD and the rest was
below Bachelor or above PhD. An overview of the respondents'
prole as derived from their demographic information in the
questionnaire is presented in Table 1.
6. Data analysis and results
For analysis, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation
Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used which is evolving as a key
method in statistical modeling technique (Hair et al., 2013). This
approach is an appropriate method especially when issues such as
sample size limitations and measurement difculties arise (Hair,
Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2009). The analysis part was done using SmartPLS 2.0 tool which is created by Ringle, Wende, and Will
(2005). The PLS-SEM analysis part consists of measurement validity
and hypothesis testing.
5.2. Sample
6.1. Measurement validity
The respondents were selected from students in different elds
and majors from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
To ensure the adequacy of the sample size, G*power software
(Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) was used. The settings
proposed by Dattalo (2008) were used (a 0.05 and b 0.80 for
error type one and two as stated in Dattalo's study) and for six
In order to check reliability and validity of the questionnaire's

measure, different sets of test were required to be done. Based on
Hair et al. (2013) methodology, for reective constructs including
attitude, SN, PBC, PNB, PTLP and SNS addiction, Cronbach's a and
composite reliability test was used to the internal consistency.
551
Table 1
Respondents' prole.
Gender
Age
Citizenship
Religion
Current level of education
Level of income (Ringgit Malaysia)
SNS type
SNS hours (per day)
a
b
Male
Female
<20
(20e22]
(22e25]
(25e29]
>29
Malaysian
Non-Malaysian
Muslim
Buddhist
Hindu
Christian
Others
SPMa & STPMb
Diploma
Bachelor
Master
PhD
Others
<500
501e1000
1001e2000
2001e3000
3000<
Facebook
Twitter
Google
LinkedIn
Other SNSs
None
<30
[30 mine1 hour)
[1e3) hours
[3e4) hours
[4e5) hours
7< hours
Frequency
Frequency
Questionnaire type
Total 441
V1
V2
V3
54
59
18
37
21
16
21
80
33
93
7
3
6
4
7
3
63
23
16
1
36
35
18
14
9
109
38
43
20
21
1
9
24
31
20
11
17
60
51
21
29
20
26
15
72
39
90
10
1
6
4
4
3
56
29
16
3
22
49
20
8
11
106
36
39
25
11
0
5
22
44
17
7
15
59
53
33
18
24
21
16
75
37
94
51
54
26
23
16
18
22
69
36
87
1
5
4
4
1
54
40
9
4
34
38
23
7
8
99
40
48
21
18
0
13
28
35
17
6
13
1
5
4
2
2
58
25
16
2
27
43
15
8
11
102
38
47
22
19
0
12
26
31
20
7
9
Percentage
V4
224
217
98
107
81
81
74
296
145
364
33
6
22
16
17
9
231
117
57
10
119
165
76
38
39
416
152
177
88
69
1
39
100
141
74
31
54
51%
49%
22%
24%
18%
18%
17%
67%
33%
83%
7%
1%
5%
4%
4%
2%
52%
27%
13%
2%
27%
37%
17%
9%
9%
94%
34%
40%
20%
16%
0%
9%
23%
32%
17%
7%
12%
Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM, English: Malaysian Certicate of Education).

Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM, English: Malaysian Higher School Certicate).
Finally, Convergent validity was evaluated using Average Variance

Extracted (AVE) and outer loading. Table 2 summarizes the result of
these tests.
All the AVE values exceeded the threshold of 0.5 which reected
reasonable values, except for the addiction scale. Regarding the
outer loadings, the only problematic items were SN01, SAD01 and
SAD03 which did not meet the desired threshold of 0.7. However,
Hair et al. (2013. p.103) advise that generally, indicators with outer
loadings between 0.4 and 0.7 should be considered for removal
from the scale only when deleting the indicator leads to an increase
in the composite reliability (or the average variance extracted)
above the suggested threshold value. In the case of SN01, since
both the AVE and composite reliability were above the threshold,
this indicator was not removed from the measurement model. For
SAD01 and SAD03, since SAD01 was the minimum amount and
removing it resulted in an AVE of 0.537 for SNS addiction, it was
removed from further analysis but SAD03 was retained since
removing the rst one resulted in an acceptable amount of AVE for
SNS addiction.
To ensure the discriminant validity of the survey instrument,
Fornel-Larker criterion test was employed. As presented in Table 3,
all the amounts of the square roots of each construct's AVE were
larger than its correlation with other constructs and, hence, this
instrument was found to have discriminant validity.
Finally, For MI which was the only formative construct, the

tolerance, VIF and outer weight were examined. The results are
presented in Table 4.
As can be observed in Table 4, the MI indicators passed the requirements for the collinearity issue including tolerance and VIF.
However, MI01 was lacking in the signicance and did not pass the
minimum threshold of 1.96 for the t-statistic of the outer weight. In
this case, as suggested by Hair et al. (2013), the outer loading for
this particular indicator should be checked. Hair et al. (2013) propose that if the outer loading passes the minimum amount of 0.5,
the indicator should be considered as absolutely important but not
as relatively important and, hence, should be kept in the analysis.
Since the outer Loading for MI01 was 0.64; it was retained and
included for further analysis and hypotheses testing.
6.2. Hypothesis testing

In order to test hypotheses, path coefcients (results of PLS), in
addition to p-values and t-statistics (results of bootstrapping) were
examined (see Table 5). PLS-SEM approach was used to determine
the effect of six independent variables on the behavioral intention.
The results show this model to be structurally good (R2 0.657)
and able to predict behavioral intention in case of SNSs. Table 5
summarizes the results for hypothesis testing.
552
Table 2
Reliability and convergent validity check results for reective measures.
Construct
Internal consistency reliability
Convergent Validity
Name
Short form
Cronbach's alpha (>0.6)
Composite reliability (>0.7)
AVE (>0.5)
Outer loading (>0.7)
Attitude
ATT
0.860
0.895
0.780
Intention
INT
0.860
0.897
0.781
Perceived threat of legal punishment
PTLP
0.844
0.906
0.762
Personal normative beliefs
PNB
0.651
0.811
0.590
Perceived behavioral control
PBC
0.778
0.870
0.691
Subjective norms
SN
0.684
0.816
0.609
SNS addiction
SAD
0.815
0.850
0.477
ATT01
ATT02
ATT03
INT01
INT02
INT03
PTLP01
PTLP02
PTLP03
PNB01
PNB02
PNB03
PBC01
PBC02
PBC03
SN01
SN02
SN03
SAD01
SAD02
SAD03
SAD04
SAD05
SAD06
0.909
0.884
0.857
0.897
0.849
0.903
0.850
0.910
0.858
0.739
0.733
0.828
0.823
0.857
0.813
0.655
0.875
0.899
0.482
0.805
0.541
0.744
0.801
0.704
Table 3
FornelleLarcker criterion analysis.
SAD
ATT
INT
PBC
PNB
PTLP
SN
MI
SAD
ATT
INT
PBC
PNB
PTLP
SN
MI
0.732
0.171
0.132
0.045
0.105
0.082
0.101
0.01
0.883
0.723
0.422
0.638
0.357
0.562
0.406
0.884
0.538
0.612
0.29
0.639
0.419
0.831
0.343
0.227
0.442
0.223
0.768
0.428
0.529
0.465
0.873
0.291
0.468
0.78
0.364
Formative
Table 4
Results of factor analysis for formative construct.
Collinearity statistics
Signicance
Name
Construct
Items
Tolerance
(>0.2)
VIF
(<5)
Outer weight
Outer loading
t-statistic (>1.96)
p value
Moral intensity
MI 01
MI 02
MI 03
0.760
0.588
0.638
1.316
1.700
1.566
0.329
0.681
0.496
0.640
0.917
0.850
0.877
4.772
3.399
0.381
0.000 (***)
0.000 (***)
Note:
***
<0.01.
Table 5
Summary of results.
HI
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
Note:
**
<0.05,
R2 0.657
Path
Attitude
Subjective norms
Moral intensity
Perceived threat of legal punishment
ATT / INT
SN / INT
PBC / INT
PNB / INT
MI / INT
PTLP / INT
***
Hypothesis test
Path coefcient
p-value
0.398
0.215
0.216
0.159
0.096
0.074
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.019
0.021
(***)
(***)
(***)
(***)
(**)
(**)
t-statistic
Result
8.176
5.204
5.495
3.122
2.069
2.030
Supported
Supported
Supported
Supported
Supported
Not supported
<0.01.
According to the results all hypotheses were accepted (at
p < 0.001 for H1 to H4 and p < 0.01 for H5) except H6. For the effect
553
of PTLP on behavioral intention, although t-statistics and p-value

were high, the path coefcient reected a positive relationship
which was in contrary with the predicted relationship between
these two constructs. Consequently, H6 which predicted a negative
and signicant relationship between PTLP and intention was
rejected.
Among all the constructs, attitude had the highest path coefcient and t-statistics in general and in each scenario except 3rd
scenario (Appendix C). Attitude was followed by PBC and SN with a
distinctive difference with the rest of constructs. Since these three
factors were the three original factors of TPB, this research also
supports the original theory in the context of SNSs ethical behavior.
To measure the relative impact of each independent construct on
the dependent construct, effect size was assessed as suggested by
Hair et al. (2013). Table 6, presents the results of this test on the
research model. It needs to be mentioned that the R2 value that was
used to test the effect size was the value after removing PTLP
(0.651).
According to the results in Table 6, attitude had the highest effect size (0.22), which can be interpreted as a medium effect. The
rest of the constructs had a small effect size and MI had the lowest
effect size of 0.01. This shows that the majority of the variance was
explained by the combination of constructs rather than their independent contribution.
To assess the relative predictive relevance of an independent
construct on the dependent construct, StoneeGeisser's Q2 (Geisser
& Eddy, 1979; Stone, 1974) was assessed. This was done by means of
the blindfolding technique which is available in the SmartPLS 2.0
software. To run the blindfolding algorithm, two considerations
must be taken into account. Firstly, the blindfolding procedure is
only applicable for reective or single-item constructs. Secondly, to
set omission distance (D), a value of 5 to 10 should be used to make
sure the number of valid observations divided by the omission
distance is not an integer. Since in the current research, the number
of valid observations was equal to 441, the omission distance was
set to be equal to 10. After running bootstrapping, the Q2 value of
this model was 0.506, reecting a good predictive relevance for
intention. The next step was to assess q2 which reects each individual independent construct's relevance to predict intention. The
results are presented in Table 7.
As shown in Table 7, the highest predictive relevance observed
belonged to attitude, followed by PBC, SN and PNB. The observed
value of MI was lower than the small category. This indicates that
the reasonable value of 0.506 for the predictive relevance was the
result of these constructs together instead of a single one with great
predictive relevance.
categorical variable which potentially can affect all relationships

(Hair et al., 2013). Continuous moderating effects occur when a
variable which is not categorical affects a relationship in a model. In
this research, Gender, religion, citizenship and level of education
were dealt with as categorical moderators (see Table 8), and age,
ego strength, LOC, and SNS addiction were treated as continuous
moderators (see Table 9). To assess the categorical moderating effect, PLS-SEM multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA) was used and for
continuous moderating effect, the product indicator approach (PIA)
was employed.
Among the possible moderators, level of education seemed to
affect the impact of attitude and PNB on intention. Level of education reinforced the impact of attitude on intention. It means that,
in this study's population, the postgraduate students were most
likely to follow their attitude in comparison with undergraduate
students. On the other hand, the level of education weakened the
negative impact of PNB on intention. It means that, in the investigated population, the undergraduate students were more likely to
follow their feeling about an act to be morally wrong or not. Age
also showed a moderating effect on the impact of attitude and PNB
in a positive way. It means that the impact of attitude and PNB
became more important as age increased. The path coefcient and
p value for age as a moderator indicated that it reinforced both the
positive effect of attitude and the negative effect of PNB.
In addition to moderating effect testing, the proposed moderators were checked for any possible direct effect on the intention. To
this end, SNS addiction, age, ego strength and LOC were included
for the required tests. The categorical nature of religion, gender,
level of education and citizenship stopped us from conducting the
same tests for these variables. Table 10 presents the results of these
tests.
Based on the PLS-SEM test results for any probable effect of the
aforementioned variables, no signicant paths were observed in
the assessment of the constructs.
6.3. Moderator analysis
6.4. Role of scenario
Moderating effects occur when the effect of an independent

variable on a dependent variable depends on another variable. The
latter is called a moderator variable which can be either categorical
or continuous. Categorical moderating effects occur in cases with a
As it was discussed, all the collected data were based on the four
scenarios that were designed and embedded within the questionnaire. Therefore, it was a crucial step to investigate the role of those
scenarios on the observed relationships in the model. To this end, at
rst, the results of the hypotheses testing based on different scenarios were gured (see Appendix C) and another MGA-PLS was
then conducted. As there were four groups of subsamples regarding
scenarios, four sets of MGA-PLS were done. Each time, the responses to one scenario were excluded from the sample and the
results of the tests for that particular scenario were compared with
the whole dataset excluding that particular scenario. Table 11
represents the results for PLS-MGA based on different scenarios.
The empirical evidence indicates a marginal difference (p < 0.1)
for the statistical signicance of SN in Scenario 1, in comparison
with the rest of the responses. In conclusion, based on the results in
Table 11 and Appendix C, without trying to propose a general rule, it
Table 6
Effect size results for the conrmed hypotheses.
Path
Attitude / intention
Subjective norms / intention
Perceived behavioral control / intention
Personal normative beliefs / intention
Moral intensity / intention
Note: NS nonsignicant.
Effect size
f2
Category
0.22
0.08
0.09
0.03
0.01
Medium
Small
Small
Small
NS
Table 7
Predictive relevance results.
Path
Attitude / intention
Subjective norms / intention
Perceived behavioral control / intention
Personal normative beliefs / intention
Moral intensity / intention
Predictive relevance
q2
Category
0.13
0.04
0.05
0.02
0.01
Small
Small
Small
Small
NS
Note: NS nonsignicant.
554
Table 8
The results of MGA-PLS for categorical moderators.
Independent variable
Male vs. Female
ATT
MI
PBC
PNB
PTLP
SN
Note:
<0.10,
**
Muslims vs. non-Muslims
Malaysian vs. NonMalaysian
Undergraduates vs.
Postgraduates
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
0.396
0.32
0.361
0.096
1.638
0.289
0.692
0.749
0.718
0.923
0.102
0.772
1.049
0.321
0.92
0.654
1.358
0.173
0.295
0.749
0.358
0.514
0.175
0.863
1.274
0.043
0.758
0.489
0.123
1.379
0.204
0.966
0.449
0.625
0.902
0.169
2.179
0.622
1.582
1.972
0.751
0.03
0.03 (**)
0.534
0.114
0.095 (*)
0.453
0.976
<0.05.
Table 9
Results of PIA-PLS for continuous moderators.
Moderator
Age
Path coefcient
t-statistic
p value
Signicance level
Path coefcient
t-statistic
p value
Signicance level
Path coefcient
t-statistic
p value
Signicance level
Path coefcient
t-statistic
p value
Signicance level
Ego strength
LOC
SNS addiction
Note:
**
<0.05,
***
ATT / INT
MI / INT
PBC / INT
PNB / INT
PTLP / INT
SN / INT
0.077
2.606
0.009
(***)
0.01
0.288
0.773
NS
0.01
0.298
0.766
NS
0.091
1.176
0.24
NS
0.035
0.826
0.409
NS
0.022
0.567
0.571
NS
0.3
0.724
0.469
NS
0.045
0.571
0.568
NS
0.002
0.047
0.963
NS
0.011
0.347
0.728
NS
0.004
0.13
0.897
NS
0.102
0.991
0.322
NS
0.065
2.003
0.046
(**)
0.027
0.763
0.445
NS
0.016
0.478
0.633
NS
0.1
1.188
0.235
NS
0.092
0.268
0.788
NS
0.000
0.008
0.994
NS
0.012
0.463
0.643
NS
0.035
0.998
0.318
NS
0.032
0.839
0.402
NS
0.03
1.08
0.281
NS
0.004
0.11
0.912
NS
0.063
0.948
0.344
NS
<0.01.
Table 10
Direct impact of SNS addiction, age, ego strength and LOC on behavioral intention.
Path
Path coefcient
t statistics
p value
Result
SNS Addiction / INT

Age / INT
Ego strength / INT
LOC / INT
0.047
0.032
0.037
0.018
1.384
0.565
1.191
0.673
0.167
0.572
0.234
0.501
NS
NS
NS
NS
and many psychologists for a number of years have denied its

impact on behavior (Calder & Ross, 1973; Campbell, 1963; Wicker,
1969). However, this argument is contrary to the TPB which identies attitude as one of the predictors of behavioral intention. The
results of this study supported the TPB in the context of unethical
behavior in SNSs. The results showed attitude to be the most
Table 11
PLS-MGA results for different scenarios.
1 vs. 2, 3, 4
ATT
MI
PBC
PNB
PTLP
SN
Note:
<0.10,
**
2 vs. 1, 3, 4
3 vs. 1, 2, 4
4 vs. 1, 2, 3
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
t-statistic
p value
0.367
0.074
1.18
1.103
1.413
1.679
0.714
0.941
0.239
0.271
0.158
0.094 (*)
0.007
0.264
0.562
0.007
2.368
0.322
0.994
0.792
0.574
0.994
0.018 (**)
0.748
1.371
0.961
0.337
0.698
1.583
0.751
0.173
0.338
0.737
0.486
0.114
0.454
0.952
0.231
1.15
0.951
0.176
0.231
0.342
0.818
0.248
0.343
0.860
0.818
<0.05.
can be conjectured that when an action becomes public and subject

to others' judgments, the role of attitude will become less important than SN. However, this should be subjected to further study
and cannot be proposed without empirical evidence. The outcome
of this research can be summarized in the nal conceptual framework which is presented in Fig. 2.
7. Discussion
Neglecting the impact of attitude on behavior has a long history
important predictor of behavioral intention. For older students and

students with higher levels of education, the role of attitude was
signicantly higher than for younger students with lower levels of
education. People from the former group considered their own
attitude more in different situations in comparison with people in
the latter group. This signicant impact suggests that, in order to
have a more ethical culture in SNSs, efforts should be targeted at
changing attitudes.
The positive impact of SN was also supported in this study. This
is in line with the TPB (Ajzen, 1985). Although some researchers
555
Fig. 2. Conrmed conceptual model of unethical behavior in the SNS context.
believe that SN is not important in predicting behavioral intention

(e.g. Banerjee et al., 1998; Leonard et al., 2004; Sheppard et al.,
1988; Sparks et al., 1995) and is the weakest construct of TPB
(Sheppard et al., 1988), this research showed the opposite. The
empirical evidence supported the role of SN in the general model.
However, in the different scenarios, its role was altered and its
signicance level changed in different cases. As a probable cause, it
can be inferred from this research that attitude is the most
important factor in activities that can be done anonymously (1st,
2nd and 4th scenarios). However, in activities that cannot be performed anonymously, SN becomes more important (3rd scenario).
To put it another way, it can be suggested hypothetically that
people consider their own attitude instead of SN when nobody is
there to judge them. Instead, they care less about their attitude and
more about SN in a situation where they feel that others will judge
their behavior.
The empirical evidence also supported the positive impact of
PBC on intention. It means that people engage more with those
activities that they feel are easier for them to do. The strong
impact of PBC on intention was observed in all the investigated
scenarios and no moderating variable showed any impact on its
inuence over intention. Since PBC in this research is dened as
the perceived ease of a certain behavior, it reects an individual's
ability to use and manipulate ICTs. Since governments around the
world aim to develop populations with high levels of ICT literacy,
it needs to be acknowledged that this has its own price. Although
having a society with a high level of ICT literacy brings many
benets, it also results in the rise of the unethical use of ICTs. A
nave solution based on this nding is to block the access to SNSs
to solve the issue as is practiced in some countries (AFP, 2013). PBC
in this study's context was mostly subjected to the inuence of
technical aspects. To this end, governments should consider
blocking free access to all available content in SNSs. This is practiced in some countries (Christensen, 2009; Jafarkarimi, Sim,
Saadatdoost, & Hee, 2014; Tait, 2006) but has not reected any
improvements in ethical behavior and in some cases has even
worsened the issue. Since people are always able to use new ways
to access the blocked content (Faris & Villeneuve, 2008; Jones,
Campbell, Gaffner, & Spencer, 2003), and it is common for
young people to bypass these ltering systems, it only limits the
supervisory presence of adults. Just like the real world, adults can
play the role of instructors to teach youngsters how to behave

ethically. Without adults as instructors, young people who are
more curious will be alone in the SNS environment without
anybody there to teach them how to be an ethical person.
The negative impact of PNB or moral obligation on unethical
behavioral intention was also supported in this research. In theory,
when an individual does not like a particular act to be done to her,
she should feel morally obligated to not do that particular act to
someone else (Bentham, 1907). For instance, typically if someone
believes that her picture should not be shared on SNSs by a third
party, she would be inuenced by the same moral obligation when
she wants to share someone else's picture. To raise the moral
obligation in people, real-world cases can be discussed in sessions
to show the impact of unethical behavior in other people's lives.
Empathy can increase the moral obligation among people and
consequently guide their behavior in ethical dilemma cases (Haney,
1994). This would be an effective technique to educate people
about the consequences of different unethical activities on people's
lives and raise their moral obligation when they consider performing the activities themselves.
The results of this study indicated the negative impact of MI on
behavioral intention. It is argued that if people feel that their actions are not important and consequently have low levels of MI,
they do not view it as having an ethical component (Singhapakdi,
Vitell, & Kraft, 1996). This is the case with many online behaviors.
People do not feel that their clicks and shares are changing lives.
For instance, students who cyberbully other students may not see
this act as a crucial unethical behavior and think of it as an
amusement. However, the fact is that in several cases cyberbullying has led to unpredictable and catastrophic results such as
suicide (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Based on this nding, the best
practice to demonstrate the MI of unethical behaviors in the SNS
context is to review different cases for students and try to highlight the role of likes, shares and comments in SNSs (Gerlitz &
Helmond, 2011). This will enable young people to feel the impact
of these components and understand their role and see the ethical
issues which consequently have an impact on their ethical
behavior in this context.
According to Table 5, for PTLP, a signicant p value was
observed which reected a strong relationship. However, this
relationship was expected to be negative, while the path
556
coefcient value reected the contrary. This was the same case
with PTLP's role in two of four scenarios (as presented in
Appendix C), and in another two scenarios, the path coefcient
was not even signicant. To explain this result, several reasons
can be considered. The rst reason could be that the measures
failed to reect the PTLP construct. There is a possibility that this
issue arose and it is a normal occurrence in research. However,
since the PTLP construct indices were based on previous studies
(Grasmick & Green, 1980), and they passed different steps of
validly and reliability tests, it is very unlikely that the weakness
of the measurement caused this nding. The second reason could
be the fact that people engage in online unethical behavior more
easily, even if there is a strong rule to avoid it. For instance,
although there are strong legal acts to ght cybercrimes, the rate
of cybercrime victimization is at least two times higher than
conventional crimes (UNODC, 2013). To be more specic, under
the Malaysian Copyright Amendment Act (2003), copyright offences have nes up to RM20,000 (for each infringing copy).
However, pirated movies, music and software are easily accessible and widely used all over the country (Bernama, 2010). In
these cases, although people know that the law is strict, they still
use infringing copies. Based on these facts, it can be said that
although the threat of legal punishment might be high for a
certain activity, people still commit the illegal act. In fact, in this
case, the PTLP should have no impact on the behavioral intention.
However, the t-statistic and path coefcient reected a positive
relationship which was statistically signicant and could not be
the outcome of chance. Therefore, the third and best justication
is to argue that a missing factor is required to mediate the impact
of PTLP on intention. A mediating effect occurs when a third
variable, which represents the generative mechanism through
which the main independent variable is affected, is able to inuence the dependent variable of interest (Baron & Kenny, 1986).
Although the probable mediator of this relationship is outside
the scope of this research, overall gain is a candidate construct
which can be studied in future research. This suggests that, since
people do a costebenet analysis prior to a behavior (Schweitzer,
n
~ ez, & Douma, 2004), they behave in a way to secure the
Ordo
highest gain. Taking overall gain as the mediator of PTLP means
that even though the risk of legal punishment for some acts increases, the gain from the act is far more, which makes PTLP
insignicant. To put it in other words, in the investigated scenarios, although people believe that if they get caught, they will
face a problem, the pleasure or benet from those particular
activities is far more than the risk. Therefore, as PTLP increases,
the pleasure in these activities also increases. As a result, when
the impact of this hypothetical mediator is deleted, the path
between PTLP and intention seems to be a positive and strong
relationship. This is the most probable cause of the positive
signicance of PTLP on intention.
Among the potential moderators including gender, religion,
ego strength, LOC, SNS addiction, age, citizenship and level of
education, only the last two reected a signicant moderating
effect. Interestingly, the level of education and age were both
shown to be moderators of attitude and PNB. The results suggest
that older people care more about their feelings of how morally
obligated they are if they engage in an action. If they feel more
morally obligated in an unethical behavior, they would not be very
interested in performing that act. Instead, if they believe that
something is good to do, they would be more interested to engage
in it and would be less inuenced by other forces such as SN. The
same is the case for level of education. For instance, if a case
happens in which sharing a particular comment or picture is
among the options, older people and more educated people are
more likely to follow their own attitude and moral obligation
instead of thinking about others' ideas. This is the contrary in

younger people.
According to the results, gender, religion, ego strength, LOC, SNS
addiction and country of origin reected no signicance on any of
hypothetical paths. None of these factors altered the impact of the
investigated predictors on behavioral intention.
8. Limitation
It is known that students are frequent users of SNSs (Lyndon,
Bonds-Raacke, & Cratty, 2011) which makes them an interesting
sample for this research. In addition, the results of previous
research suggests that student and non-student samples are much
the same (Croson, 2007; Druckman, Green, Kuklinski, & Lupia,
2011). Students' samples have been widely used in different
studies (Limayem, Khalifa, & Chin, 2004), especially when behavior
is under investigation (Leonard et al., 2004) However, it also limited
the results in some aspects. The range of age among the students in
this study's sample was not widely distributed and most of them
were aged between 18 and 29 years (83%). In addition, the level of
income among the students was expectedly low, with 81% below
RM2000, which might have had some impact on the results. Lastly,
most of the respondents were undergraduate students (52%) which
limited this variable to a categorical level of measurement. In this
circumstance, it was not possible to use level of income as a
continuous variable to assess its potential direct impact on
behavioral intention.
Finally, the sampling method was not probabilistic which affects
the generalizability of this research. With non-probabilistic sampling, the generalizability is always questionable (Kumar, 2005).
& Pare
, 2003;
However, it is a common issue in all IS research (Dube
Gable, 1994; Seddon & Scheepers, 2012) and is not a reason to give
up claims about generality.
9. Implications
This study provides an understanding of the inuential factors
that affect ethical behavioral intention. The ndings can be used
by planners and policy-makers to develop guidelines to enhance
the ethical environment of SNSs which consequently affect the
whole society. To this end, planners should raise awareness by
means of training programs and seminars focusing on the
reduction of SNS misuse. Since people mostly learn by examples
(Leonard & Cronan, 2001), these training programs should
employ possible cases and raise questions to the audiences such
as What could happen as a result of these likes and shares? The
focus of these training programs should be the moral development of individuals. It has been shown that such actions can be
effective to reduce the misuse of computers (Banerjee et al.,
1998).
In addition, codes of conduct could be implemented and
enacted by formulating possible issues. Codes of conduct can be a
useful reference as ethical guidelines when people face dilemmas
(Banerjee et al., 1998). Studies have found that codes of conduct
affect certain forms of computer abuses (Harrington, 1996). Based
on a review of 1000 industrial and service sector businesses, the
Center for Business Ethics (Instilling ethical values in large
corporations, 1992) reported that codes of conduct in line with
ethical training would be the most effective approach for
implementing ethics initiatives. Through these trainings, people
could understand what is ethical and what is not. Consequently,
they would feel morally obligated if they face an unethical
choice. As a result, in the long term, training and codes of
conduct can decrease the incidence of unethical behavior in
SNSs.
This study was set in a multi-cultural context with a sample of

Malaysian and non-Malaysian individuals. The study sample thus
consisted of people from different religions and races with different
characteristic indexes (ego, LOC, etc.). Accordingly, with well-stated
cases and respondent proles, this study can be applied to other
populations sharing the same context. Specically, these results are
expected to be the same at least with other university students in
Malaysia.
10. Conclusion and future work
SNSs are more than tools to make friends, but effective tools
with a vast usage. Politicians use SNS as a tool to connect
with citizens, and businesses employ SNS to interact with customers. Others use SNS to spread lies, stalk victims, defame and
accuse others, and interact with terrorists. The high inuence
and popularity of SNSs make them a tool which, when misused,
can lead to disaster. Hence, planners, lecturers, teachers and
parents should take proper actions while it is possible. This
study's insights can be used along with the ndings of other
studies to develop plans to control the unethical behavior in
SNSs.
In order to achieve the objective of this research, the designed
questionnaire was used to collect data. Based on the results, ve out
of the six hypotheses were supported. These hypotheses proposed
a direct impact of attitude, SN, PBC, PNB and MI on behavioral
intention. The empirical evidence did not support the sixth hypothesis on the negative impact of PTLP. The reason behind the fail
of this hypothesis is an interesting topic which can be pursued in
future studies. Although it might be justied with the absence of a
mediator like overall gain, it is subjected to further research and
studies.
This research can be further studied in several aspects. Firstly,
the proposed model could be tested and validated across various
contexts, samples and cases. A cross-cultural study with the
same concept is also an interesting topic for future research.
Investigating the proposed model in other countries can be a
prolic topic of research. Researchers have suggested that culture is important for ethical decision making in the ICT context
(e.g. Ahmed, Chung, & Eichenseher, 2003; Husted, 2000; Vitell,
Nwachukwu, & Barnes, 1993); but is it still valid for SNSs that
are worldwide societies? Is there a unique culture ruling
different SNSs? Are there different cultures in different countries
regarding the use of SNSs or does the context of SNS has its own
culture? These and other related questions could be the aim of
further studies. In addition, further studies can focus on identifying the unethical behavior performed by groups of people
rather than by individuals. While the present study was in
progress, different incidents occurred with groups of people
collaborating to carry out harassment and other types of unethical behavior using SNSs (see Prenderville, 2013a;
Prenderville, 2013b; Speri, 2014). Further studies can focus on
group behaviors and what makes a group of people behave
unethically in SNSs.
In addition to these six hypotheses, the possible moderating
impacts of gender, religion, age, ego strength, LOC and SNS addiction were investigated. Among them, the level of education and age
reected a statistically signicant moderating effect on the impact
of attitude and PNB on intention. The model was tested in different
scenarios and the only variation was observed on the impact of SN
on behavior. It means that the impact of SN on behavioral intention
was not the same in the different scenarios. Finally, based on the
557
detailed analysis, the conrmed model of unethical behavior in the

context of SNSs was presented.
Acknowledgments
This research is funded by Iran's Islamic Azad University of
Damavand and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in collaboration with the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE).
Authors gratefully acknowledge the support of research grants:
FRGS (vot no. 4F441) and GUP Tier 1 (vot no. 11H92). Authors
would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Jen-Her Wu, the associate editor
and the anonymous reviewers for their many helpful
suggestionst.
Appendix A
Scenario 1
Jack is a manager of a newborn company which is employing
new staff for an important position. Reviewing applicants' resumes,
He nds two potential engineers for the job. He doubts which one
to employ. He decides to check their Facebook where he discovers
that one of the applicants is pregnant and speculate that she might
not be able to work properly. He decides to reject her application
and employ the other applicant.
Scenario 2
Recently, Mark feels something has changed in his relationship
with his girlfriend. He felt that there is another man in her life.
Being a skillful web programmer, he decides to program a code to
trace all her Facebook activities including comments, likes and
shares. This application makes a report each day and sends it to
Mark's email. He hopes to nd important information to keep track
of her daily activities.
Scenario 3
Jeremy is a normal journalist. Recently, one of his Facebook
friends was murdered and became an important topic for newspapers. He was only a Facebook friend and he did not know him in
the real world. Jeremy has access to many private issues of the
murder and he can write a complete story about this case. This can
make him a famous journalist and affects the rest of his professional career. However, his friend, set many issues only visible for
his friends list and he may not want others to know about them.
Thinking as the only opportunity in his life, Jeremy decides to use
his Facebook information to write the story and sell it to a good
newspaper.
Scenario 4
Michael is the admin of a page on Facebook which represent a
student society in his university. Recently, some users have
started to criticize this society with harsh words. They use a very
impolite language to tell their ideas and Michael is not able to
use their language to reply them because he considers the
reputation of the student society. Considering the only option he
makes a fake ID in Facebook and starts to ght them back in their
own way.
558
Appendix B
Instruments and measures used in this research
Construct
Item
Adapted from
Intention
If I were X*, I would do as he did.

Depending on the situation, I could do as X did.
I may do as X did in future.
X's Decision is good.
X's Decision is wise.
X's Decision is benecial.
If I do what X did in this scenario, most of the people who are important to me would
not care.
If I do as X did, most of the people who are important to me would approve.
Most People who are important to me think that I should do as X did in this scenario.
If I wanted to, I would easily do as X did.
Technically it is easy for me to act as X did in this scenario.
I would be able to do what X did even if there was no one to show me how.
In my opinion, it is morally wrong to do as X did.
I would not feel guilty if I do what X did. (R)
In my opinion X's act is wrong.
If I do what X did, I might be arrested.
If I do what X did and I get arrested, I will be in a big problem.
If I do as X did and I get arrested. The punishment that I will face will create a big
problem for my life.
The overall harm (if any) done as result of X's decision would be high. (magnitude of
consequences)
The probability that others suffer from X's act would be high.
I believe if I do as X did, others would feel the negative effects very quickly.
4th subscale of Barron's instrument.
29 items of Rotter's instrument
(Chen et al., 2009) (Chatterjee, 2008)
Attitude
Subjective norms
Perceived threat of legal

punishment
Moral intensity**
Ego strength
Locus of control
*
(Ajzen, 2005)
(Arvola et al., 2008) (Chen et al., 2009)
(Armitage & Conner, 2001) (Ajzen, 2002)
(Beck & Ajzen, 1991) (Singhapakdi et al., 1996)

(Siegfried, 2004)
(Grasmick & Green, 1980)
(Tan, 2002) (Jones, 1991)
(Barron, 1953)
(Rotter, 1966)
In the questionnaire, depending on the scenario that was used, different names were replaced by X.
since MI was a multi dimension construct, it was considered as formative construct.
**
Appendix C
Hypotheses testing results based on different scenarios

Scenario
Hypothesis
Path
Path coefcient
t-statistic
p-value
1
R2 0.669
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
ATT / INT
SN / INT
PBC / NT
PNB / INT
MI / INT
PTLP / INT
ATT / INT
SN / INT
PBC / NT
PNB / INT
MI / INT
PTLP / INT
ATT / INT
SN / INT
PBC / NT
PNB / INT
MI / INT
PTLP / INT
ATT / INT
SN / INT
PBC / NT
PNB / INT
MI / INT
PTLP / INT
0.367
0.088
0.284
0.225
0.047
0.001
0.395
0.237
0.235
0.13
0.031
0.231
0.233
0.266
0.191
0.214
0.128
0.19
0.453
0.183
0.143
0.071
0.048
0.025
4.877
1.161
3.654
2.852
1.104
0.012
5.3
3.06
3.204
1.91
1.143
2.702
1.959
3.23
2.692
2.511
2.404
1.876
4.962
1.906
2.143
0.944
1.167
0.308
0.000
0.248
0.000
0.005
0.272
0.991
0.000
0.003
0.002
0.059
0.256
0.008
0.053
0.002
0.008
0.013
0.018
0.063
0.000
0.059
0.034
0.347
0.246
0.759
2
R2 0.683
3
R2 0.696
4
R2 0.642
Result
***
NS
***
**
NS
NS
***
**
***
*
NS
NS
*
***
***
**
**
NS
***
*
**
NS
NS
NS
Note:
NS not supported.
*
<0.10, ** <0.05, *** <0.01.
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Computers in Human Behavior

Full length article

Behavioral intention in social networking sites ethical dilemmas: An

Department of Computer, Damavand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Damavand, Iran

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

the most pragmatic way may be a behavioristic approach (Namlu &

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

and the perception of the severity and impact on the individual's

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

that attitude is reliable for predicting intention (Ajzen and Madden,

4.2. Subjective norms

4.3. Perceived behavioral control

websites that provide these movies. It is expected that people

4.5. Moral intensity

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

4.7. Moderating effects

1996; Mohamed, Karim, & Hussein, 2012). Peterson, Rhoads, and

4.7.6. SNS addiction

4.7.8. Level of education

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

Fig. 1. Unethical behavioral model in the context of SNSs.

independent constructs, the suggested sample size was 98. Since

In order to check reliability and validity of the questionnaire's

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

Current level of education

Level of income (Ringgit Malaysia)

SNS hours (per day)

Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM, English: Malaysian Certicate of Education).

Finally, Convergent validity was evaluated using Average Variance

Finally, For MI which was the only formative construct, the

6.2. Hypothesis testing

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

Internal consistency reliability

Cronbach's alpha (>0.6)

Composite reliability (>0.7)

Outer loading (>0.7)

Perceived threat of legal punishment

Personal normative beliefs

Perceived behavioral control

According to the results all hypotheses were accepted (at

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

of PTLP on behavioral intention, although t-statistics and p-value

categorical variable which potentially can affect all relationships

6.3. Moderator analysis

6.4. Role of scenario

Moderating effects occur when the effect of an independent

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

Male vs. Female

Muslims vs. non-Muslims

Malaysian vs. NonMalaysian

SNS Addiction / INT

and many psychologists for a number of years have denied its

can be conjectured that when an action becomes public and subject

important predictor of behavioral intention. For older students and

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

Fig. 2. Conrmed conceptual model of unethical behavior in the SNS context.

believe that SN is not important in predicting behavioral intention

play the role of instructors to teach youngsters how to behave

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

instead of thinking about others' ideas. This is the contrary in

H. Jafarkarimi et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016) 545e561

This study was set in a multi-cultural context with a sample of