Does online privacy self-efficacy help promote e-participation for rights protection?

This paper focuses on the relationship between internet users’ online privacy self-efficacy and e-participation behaviour, which merits in-depth study but remains underexplored in the literature. Drawing upon a representative sample of Chinese citizens, this paper finds that online privacy self-efficacy is positively associated with e-participation for rights protection. Instrumental variable (IV) estimation and the propensity score matching (PSM) method are used to address concerns about endogeneity problems and self-selection bias. We also find that individuals’ perceptions of internet empowerment positively influence the relationship between online privacy self-efficacy and e-participation frequency. This paper proposes that the government further optimizes the online environment and improves internet users’ knowledge and skills related to online privacy protection to strengthen citizens’ orderly online participation.