Communicating in a proper way: How people from high-/low-context culture choose their media for communication

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between cultural influence and people’s daily media choices. From the perspective of high-context and low-context culture, an online survey was conducted with 351 participants from China and America filling out questions about culture content, media richness, and daily media choices. Findings not only supported the general notion that China has a relatively high-context culture while the US is comparatively low on the scale, but also indicated that people in different cultures perceive the same communication medium differently. The current study also found out that the perceived media richness of a medium may have a negative impact on the likelihood that it would be chosen for communication. Possible reasons for these findings were explained from the perspective of media richness and social presence. This study suggested further research on variables of convenience, privacy and power distance regarding the utilization of various communication media in different contexts.

Keywords

High-/low-context culture individualism/collectivism media richness medium choice social presence

When international students from China come to the United States for the first time, they may get confused that the preferred email address is listed as one of the must-filled pieces of information in the application process. Many of them have to sign up for a new email account to fulfill this requirement. Comparatively, this request in most cases would not pose any obstacles for native US students. This means media platforms that are common and widely utilized in one country could be obsolete in another. Such examples can be easily found in other media choices for communication in various social phenomenon.

As Hall (1976) indicated, cultural features can cause differences in communication, thus influencing people’s means to achieve their goal of being connected. In this case, communication via email could be troublesome for Chinese people as communication in that culture depends largely on the part of nonverbal communication and environmental cues (Hofstede, 1980). Additionally, previous research has also found that some Chinese students lack the familiarity with email etiquette typically expected of them in a university setting (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007). This, in turn, may only add to the obstacle of email for Chinese students when it comes to communicating with their professors.

In the contemporary era, individuals decide which communication medium to use, whether deliberately or not, for every interaction they initiate. The judgment of one medium being a better option than another is based primarily on an individual’s values, which may include: convenience, the ease of a particular medium’s use, and the immediacy that medium creates (Katz et al., 1973). These values can also be influenced by the culture of the interactant (Schwartz, 1994). Meanwhile, culture has been studied as an influence in many communication areas, but culture also can be an natural explanation for many communication differences, such as communication topics, communication styles (e.g., closeness, using different tones to communicate, and direct or indirect), and communication media choice (Straub et al., 1997). Moreover, when experiencing the differences, culture plays a critical role in many situations. For example, if the majority of meanings can be easily extracted from simple sentences without the support of nonverbal or environmental cues, then communication methods such as email would suffice in many social interactions, which would arguably be the case in the United States.

This study focuses on the communication medium choices among college students when communicating with their professors. On the one hand, communicating with professors would be more formal and professional if compared to communicating with friends and family members. In this way, when considering media choices for communication, appropriateness would be much more important than personal preference or ease of use, thus emphasizing the influence of cultural differences. On the other hand, communication occurring within academic environments may differ from that in professional settings, in terms of other potential variables, such as power distance.

The importance of this research lies in understanding a particular aspect of intercultural communication in academia. While American students likely take for granted the ease with which they can communicate with their professors, Chinese students face a number of these transitional barriers, with this particular communication context being of importance. Assessing the differences in American and Chinese students in terms of the preferred medium can help professors adapt to their students more effectively, thus assisting the transition of Chinese students.

In particular, the current study uses culture as a factor in order to find explanations for communication differences in terms of communication styles, messages, and medium choices. From the perspective of high-/low-context culture, this study also aims to find out whether or not the culture context scale also influences individuals’ communication medium preference.

Review of related literature

Cultures can be identified based on the messages people in a given culture prefer to use, and this notion is commonly known as high-context (HC) and low-context (LC) cultures (Hall, 1976). One thing to note is that cultures cannot be categorized as exclusively “high context” or “low context.” Instead, culture is on the two ends of a continuum (Hall, 1976). From this perspective, China and the United States are often regarded as having the typical HC culture and LC culture, respectively (e.g., Gudykunst et al., 1997; Hasegawa and Gudykunst, 1998; Kim et al., 1998; Okabe, 1983). American culture reflects LC values with its people being relatively open, direct, and more confrontational (Chua and Gudykunst, 1987; Gudykunst and Nishida, 1986). Chinese culture historically values HC communication while Chinese are comparatively more introverted and indirect (Tsujimura, 1987).

High-context culture vs. low-context culture

In general, high-context communication tends to use indirect verbal communication with expressions and implications embedded in nonverbal communication (Gudykunst and Nishida, 1986). On the contrary, low-context communication tends to emphasize direct and explicit information exchange (Gudykunst and Nishida, 1993). Consequentially, high-context communication requires more context-related cues, some of which are related to the communication partner (e.g., gender, age, in-group, etc.), leading to more personalized communication. In this case, low-context communication has a high demand for clarity, directness, and explicitness when transmitting the message, so that the context would be irrelevant.

In high-context cultures, intimate relationships, the well-structured social hierarchy, and social norms serve as a broad context in which interpersonal communication takes place. Therefore, most communication relies on the physical contexts or is internalized in the person and less information is contained in the verbal part of the message such as in words, sentences, and grammar (Hall, 1976). Low-context messages tend to be more “context-free” and the most crucial part of the communication would be the direct verbally transmitted words, not the surrounding environment nor the status of the speaker and the audience. Additionally, message senders in low-context cultures generally communicate in a way that is consistent with their true feelings, whereas a person from an HC culture will set the context and the setting then allows the message evolve without referring to the problem directly (Wurtz, 2005).

In essence, the notion of high-/low-context summarizes how people in a particular culture relate to one another, especially in social bonds, responsibilities, commitments, relationships, and communication. It helps people to understand the differences among cultures more easily and to study communication and other implications of cultural differences (Kim et al., 1998). For the current study, the difference of high- and low-context communication is revealed in the aspect of thought pattern and language style.

Thought pattern, which is defined as the reasoning process in order to solve problems of all kinds, varies based on culture (Choe, 2001). Logic and rationality would generally be the emphasis in low-context culture while the core communication values in high-context cultures could be appropriateness and formality. In terms of conversations, low-context communication would prefer to go straight to the point where high-context communication may avoid mentioning the subjects directly for the whole message (Wurtz, 2005). For information presenting styles, high-context cultures generally prefer the circular method, which involves jumping back and forth on the given topic, while the linear way that goes from one point to another suits low-context cultures better (Wurtz, 2005).

Comparatively speaking, communication in low-context languages, such as English, is more universally used than some high-context languages such as Chinese or Japanese. One reason is that less contextual cues are required in low-context language in terms of understanding the message. In general, contextual cues consist of “subject of activity, situation, status, past experience, and culture” (Hall, 1976: 87). In high-context communication, the challenge is not only the more context but also the fact that context is specific to the particular culture and language. That is to say, people in a high-context culture would feel relatively more comfortable communicating with someone from a low-context culture, when compared to someone from a different high-context culture (Usunier and Roulin, 2010).

Media richness theory

Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1984) indicates that all communication media vary in their ability to enable users to communicate and change understanding, namely, their “richness.” In specific, this theory argued that people rationally chose different channels for the purpose of communication based on both channel richness and message equivocality (Richardson and Smith, 2007). In this case, message equivocality means ambiguity and confusion which would cause shallow understanding or even conflicting interpretation of the intended information (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Daft et al., 1987).

The richness level of a given media is usually made of two parts, which are the language contained in the information as well as the actual performance of the transmitted message. On the one hand, Daft and Wiginton (1979) identified nine different types of languages: “art, nonverbal cues, poetry, general verbal expression, jargon, linguistic variables, computer languages, probability theory, and analytical mathematics” (p. 24). Later, Daft et al. (1987) broadly grouped these alternatives into two categories: natural language and numbers. Thus, to a certain extent, the capability of using both natural language and numbers would decide the basic richness of a given media from the perspective of the message sender.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the message receiver, the performance of the information was defined in their aspects: “Making better decisions (decision quality), establishing shared systems of meaning (consensus among participants), and making better use of participants’ time (time required to reach conclusions)” (Trevino et al., 1990: 71–96). Additionally, users’ satisfaction is also suggested as an element of performance, and in most cases in an indirect way (Lengel and Daft, 1989). Since satisfaction has long been a key factor in group work (Hackman, 1990; McGrath, 1984), and communication tend to go back and forth without allowing one party to be the constant message sender or receiver, the current study argues that the satisfaction level of both the sender and the receiver acts as an essential feature for evaluating the performance.

Immediacy of feedback

The immediacy of feedback is the extent to which a medium enables users to give rapid feedback on the communication they received (Daft and Lengel, 1986). In most cases, communication would be the process where a message sender provides the information and the message receiver acquires and decodes it (Clarke and Brennan, 1991). For the communication to be successful, both the sender and receiver must mutually agree that the transmitted message is well understood by the intended audience (Clarke and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Thus, the feedback from the receiver to the sender also plays a vital role in communication scenarios.

Fundamentally, there are two forms of feedback as defined by Krauss and Weinheimer (1966): Concurrent feedback and sequential feedback. Concurrent feedback, which is also referred by many researchers as “back channel,” is the feedback provided simultaneously with the delivery of the message (see Duncan, 1973; Yngve, 1970). In most cases, instead of interrupting or even hijacking the conversation from the message sender, concurrent feedback takes the form of either nonverbal gestures (e.g., head nods, micro expressions) or very brief messages (e.g., “uh huh”; Kraut et al., 1992). Unlike concurrent feedback, sequential feedback occurs when the sender pauses, or the receiver interrupts, and the receiver communicates to confirm understanding or to redirect the sender’s presentation of the message. In other words, the receiver takes the turn of a speech but quickly returns presenting privilege to the sender.

Previous scholarship had categories many types of feedback in a more specific manner (see Clarke, 1992; Clarke and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986). Linking back to the theory of media richness, four of them are particularly relevant to the current study of culture and media choice. The first one would be a positive acknowledgment that indicates the message was well received. This type of feedback can be delivered concurrently (e.g., head nods, “uh huh”) or sequentially (e.g., by repeating a portion of the message; Dennis and Kinney, 1998). Feedback can also be given sequentially, through either negative acknowledgment that usually indicates a lack of understanding, or through correction when the receiver clarifies the sender’s message. In some cases, the receiver could also complete the message for the sender (Dennis and Kinney, 1998).

In this case, feedback is arguably a crucial part when measuring the media richness of a given medium. Collectively, previous scholarship indicated that lacking immediate feedback increases the number of words senders used to send the message, as well as the time required to complete the communication process (Krauss and Bricker 1967; Krauss and Weinheimer, 1966). Due to the delay between sending a message and receiving the feedback, the overall time required to complete a task for communication also tends to increase (Krauss and Bricker, 1967). Additionally, lacking feedback could also reduce the accuracy of the transmitted information (Kraut et al., 1992; Leavitt and Mueller, 1951). In conclusion, Daft and Lengel (1986) argue that mediums capable of providing immediate feedback would be richer than those that delay the communication process in one way or another.

Social presence theory

In essence, social presence theory also argues that media’s effectiveness centers on its ability to communicate the character of the relationship between the sender and receiver (Short et al., 1976). In this case, social presence refers to the degree to which a medium permits communicator to experience others as being psychologically present (see Fulk et al., 1987). From this perspective, mediums that are low in social presence, such as memos and letters, were suitable for providing information. Comparatively speaking, high social presence mediums, such as face-to-face, would be better suited for negotiation scenarios.

Additionally, media with a higher level of social presence could also provide the message sender with more exceptional ability to monitor the receiver’s reaction to the message (Dennis and Kinney, 1998; Kahai and Cooper, 2003). In other words, when using a high social presence medium, the receiver has to commit some portion of the attention to the message, hence lowering the probability of misunderstanding. As individuals increase their attention level, the effort and attention devoted to the communication process would naturally increase as well. That is to say, using a medium with a low level of social presence, the audience would be more likely to ignore the transmitted message to a certain extent (Kahai and Cooper, 2003). On the contrary, many researchers also argued that the main advantage for mediums with low level of social presence is the ability to process complicated messages (Downey, 2010; Robert and Dennis, 2005).

For instance, when communicating with people face-to-face, the receiver needs to listen to the sender and look for both verbal and nonverbal cues, hence the attention of the audience would be fully grabbed in most cases. Comparatively, if one conducts the communication through email, the receiver would have the choice of when to read and respond to the email. In this case, they would also have more time to process and reflect the received message in order to generate an answer with higher quality. Therefore, it is arguable that no type of medium would be always a better choice. Meanwhile, the intended content for transmission would at least partially determine how well suited a medium is in a specific situation.

Cultural differences in communication

Among several comprehensive dimensional frameworks that attempt to discover and verify cultural variations across cultures, Hofstede’s (1980) work on cultural differences represents significant and innovative research on cross-cultural comparisons in the areas of management, social psychology, anthropology, sociology, marketing, and communication (e.g., Albers, 1994; Kale, 1991). It is of high relevance in terms of discussing media use in various cultural contexts. Explicitly speaking, Hofstede’s (1980) study developed a structure comprised of four major dimensions on which societies would differ: power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance.

The perspective of individualism and collectivism offered social science researchers another way of explaining major differences and similarities in the ways that individuals from diverse cultures communicate (Gudykunst and Matsumoto, 1996). On the whole, research showed that individualists are more direct in their communication and they place less emphasis on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others (Singelis and Brown, 1995). People in individualistic cultures are autonomous from their in-groups, with a much higher chance of putting their personal goals as a priority if compared to the interest of their in-groups (Triandis, 2001). Whereas in collectivistic cultures people are interdependent within their in-groups (family, tribe, nation, etc.). People’s priorities, goals, behaviors, values, and social norms are all strongly shaped by their in-groups (Mills and Clark, 1982).

Additionally, people in collectivistic cultures are concerned with relationships. Collectivists in conflict situations are primarily concerned with maintaining their relationship with others, while individualists are mainly concerned with achieving justice in conflicts (Ohbuchi et al., 1999). Therefore, it is arguable that collectivists would prefer methods and mediums of communication that do not harm relationships and can avoid direct conflict (Leung, 1997).

One thing to note is that not everyone in individualistic or collectivistic cultures has all of the aforementioned characteristics. Even though a holistic view of an individual’s behavior would generally present certain tendencies of either culture dimension, it is quite understandable that people’s choices would be largely influenced by the situations they face (Triandis, 2001).

The concept of power distance deals with the issue of inequality in societies, as well as how the general public treats such a problem. Power distance is usually defined as how much the less powerful individuals within a given group would expect the power to be unequally distributed and also be accepting of it (Hofstede, 1980). From this perspective, the Chinese are generally more accepting of large power distances while Americans are more concerned with equality among people (Hofstede, 1980).

It is highly arguable that high power-distance cultures are likely to communicate using different media than low power-distance cultures (Leonard et al., 2009). For instance, within high power-distance cultures, subordinates generally expect a clear distinction between themselves and their superiors, and the communication preferences are likely to reflect it (Te’eni, 2001). Specifically, this elevated level of interactivity is generally required in high power-distance cultures since it is more effective in communicating messages about power distribution, contextual cues, emotional information, as well as specific perspectives that need to be implanted (Te’eni, 2001).

Huang et al. (2003) argued that power distance had a significant effect on whether the email was deemed an acceptable communication medium. In fact, in high power-distance cultures, the email did not have the ability to embed the symbols and cues that can show status and respect. Contrarily, low power-distance culture generally value direct information presentation through words, while lacking contextual or nonverbal cues would not propose many obstacles to the success of message transmission (Leonard et al., 2009). Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the public would consider lean communication mediums more effective. Moreover, people from low power-distance cultures tend to be independent workers and are likely to have more thoughts devoted to decisions about which medium to use in various situations (Leonard et al., 2009).

The dimension of uncertainty avoidance has to do with how people deal with the fact that the future can never be known, resulting in the choice of either try to control the future or just let it happen. This ambiguity brings anxiety, yet various cultures would put the importance of reducing anxiety at a different level. How the members of a culture feel threatened or anxious by unknown situations and how they will try to avoid these unknown situations is reflected in the score on uncertainty avoidance (Geert-Hofstede, 2016). Comparatively speaking, Chinese people are generally more comfortable than Americans when facing anxiety in communication due to the high-context culture and language style (Geert-Hofstede, 2016). In this case, the tendency for reducing uncertainty and anxiety within communication scenarios is reasonably expected to be lower for the Chinese than American people.

As suggested by media richness theory (Daft and Macintosh, 1981), communication is needed to reduce uncertainty and equivocality. In this case, the notion of uncertainty avoidance is often considered as a societal construct, where members in societies with lower uncertainty avoidance feel more comfortable with lean methods of communication while higher uncertainty avoidance members prefer communication styles that are comparatively richer (Daft and Macintosh, 1981).

Collectively, previous researchers categorized two general ways for individuals to cope with uncertainty. One can choose either to seek more direct information or to ask others for help (Shuper and Sorrentino, 2004; Sorrentino et al., 2003; Sorrentino and Roney, 2000). In this case, if the receivers were uncertainty-oriented, they might have a higher acceptance of ambiguous information. And if the receiver were certainty-oriented, ambiguous messages and those without clear context or intent would be confusing and could be rejected by receivers (Leonard et al., 2009). In other words, individual uncertainty avoidance also plays a role in the choice of media (e.g., Daft and Macintosh, 1981). Therefore, this study argues that the level of uncertainty avoidance can predict people’ media choice to a certain extent. In other words, people from different cultures would choose their communication mediums based on their ability to reduce uncertainty.

Situational factors

Even though mediums such as email may not be as rich as face-to-face communication, it would still be highly reasonable that users would prefer such a media based on other reasons unrelated to the ability of media to handle intended information (El-Shinnaway and Markus, 1997). On the one hand, some researchers argued that the level of media richness is not sufficient in terms of explaining user media choice behavior in the individual level (e.g., Bouwman and Van den Wijngaert, 2002). On the other hand, previous scholarship also indicated that new capabilities found uniquely in electronic media could enhance the richness of media (Culnan and Markus, 1987; El-Shinnaway and Markus, 1998; Markus, 1994). For example, email was found to be more suitable for more equivocal messages in some situations, counter to the prediction of media richness theory (Huang et al., 1998; Markus, 1994).

Within interactions between individuals, both the communication contact (who exchanges information with whom) and communication content (what information is communicated) could have strong influence towards the actual choice of medium (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986). For modern electronic media, both the information and the context are innovative which could present new challenges for social science researchers (Rice, 1992). In addition to the new features available in these new media, situational factors such as accessibility, availability, and experience with new media are also influential on individuals’ media choice (see El-Shinnaway and Markus, 1997; King and Xia, 1997; Rice and Shook, 1988; Steinfield, 1986). Collectively, previously scholarship indicated that the rational judgment of the richness of media is not the only determination for media choice behaviors and many other factors mentioned above should also be put into consideration.

Present study

Even though the high-context culture of China and the low-context culture of the United States had been extensively studied on a national level through numerous studies, a comparison between American and Chinese students and their preferred methods of communication with their professors has not been conducted previously. Thus, this study aims to extend the measurement of high-/low-context culture, by using an individual-level communication scale and testing the assumption that the choices of communication media between the students in the two proposed countries would be significantly different at an individual level.

Moreover, indirect language/text such as nonverbal cues was argued by researchers to play a crucial role in high-context communication, whereas explicit and direct verbal information would suffice in low-context communication. Thus, the current study predicts the media richness of various mediums would be a defining feature for people in different cultures to choose their media for communication. In specific, people in high-context culture would prefer rich media while people in low-context culture would use lean media more frequently.

Therefore, the current study proposes five hypotheses and one research question:

H1: Students from China will surpass American students in terms of their perceived level of cultural context.

H2: Students in China and America will perceive the same communication medium differently in terms of the media richness level.

H3: The higher students’ perceived cultural context level is, (a) the higher they will perceive rich medium’s media richness level, and (b) the lower they will perceive lean medium’s media richness level.

H4: The higher a given medium’s media richness level is the more likely students will choose it to communicate with professors.

H5: The higher students’ perceived cultural context level is, (a) the more likely they will use rich media to communicate with professors, and (b) the less they will use lean media to communicate with professors.

RQ1: When communicating with a professor, what are Chinese students and American students’ preferred media?

Methodologies

There were 365 participants who were recruited for the current study, 351 of which completed the survey (N = 351). Specifically, 208 students came from a large Midwestern university in the United States, and 195 of them completed the English survey (n₁ = 195). These 157 students came from a mid-sized university in central China, and 156 completed the Chinese survey (n₂ = 156). Participants’ age ranged from 18 to 27 (M = 22.1, SD = 2.6).

Within the U.S. respondents 70, were males (35.9%), and 125 were females (64.1%). 28 U.S. participants were freshmen (14.4%), 48 were sophomores (24.6%), 53 were juniors (27.2%), and 66 were seniors (33.8%). Within the Chinese participants, 111 were females (71.15%), 39 were males (25%), and 6 of them (3.85%) preferred not to answer the question. 29 Chinese participants were freshmen (18.59%), 37 were sophomore (23.72%), 49 were juniors (31.41%), and 41 were seniors (26.28%).

Instrumentation and administration

The data of the current study was gathered from online surveys. All components of the English survey instrument were first translated from English to Chinese by a bilingual speaker. The translated survey was then back-translated from Chinese to English by another bilingual speaker. When the translations were not consistent, the translators and the researchers discussed the problems and revised the surveys. The two surveys were pretested among a few English native-speaking students and Chinese international students to check for language clarity. The researchers revised the surveys accordingly after the pretest and received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board to distribute the surveys.

Specifically, participants from the U.S. were told to complete the English survey through SurveyMonkey (a widely used channel for academic survey construction and distribution), while participants from China were instructed to answer the same survey in Chinese through a hyperlink on their university’s webpage. Both Chinese participants and U.S. participants received either course credit or extra credit as the reward for completing the online survey.

Independent variable

The main independent variable of the current study was the culture context level, which is to say high versus low context. Measurements of this variable were primarily borrowed from Ohashi’s (2000) study of communication styles, as well as the study of Richardson and Smith (2007). Ohashi’s (2000) scale was generally accepted as a valid measurement, yet it was critiqued as being overly general and weak at measuring unconventional types of communication (see Bresnahan et al., 2002). Therefore, this study revised several questions from Ohashi’s scale to target specifically on participants’ individual-level preference. Richardson and Smith’s (2007) scale was incorporated as complements of the existing questions. In the end, this study utilized a five-point Likert Scale on seventeen items to measure respondents’ culture context level. Thus, the possible aggregated score for this variable would range from 17 to 85. These items achieved an acceptable level of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.84).

Dependent variables

The first dependent variable of this study was the media richness level. Measurements and medium selection of this variable were inspired by Trevino et al.’s (1990) research as well as Richardson and Smith’s (2007) study results. Specifically, respondents were asked to rate each of the following communication mediums from 1 (leanest) to 5 (richest): Face-to-face, email, phone call, text/apps, and fax. Participants were asked to rate each medium based on four characteristics of media richness, including ability to handle multiple information cues simultaneously, ability to facilitate rapid feedback, ability to establish a personal focus, and ability to utilize natural language. The more characteristics of richness a medium has, the richer the medium is. Mediums with all four features would get a score of five and medium with none of the proposed features would get a score of one.

The next dependent variable was participants’ medium choice. Measurements of this variable were borrowed from several previous studies on relational communication (e.g., Richardson and Smith, 2007; Westmyer et al., 1998). Respondents were asked to indicate how likely they would be to use the five different media to contact their professors in each of 14 situations from 1 (extremely unlikely) to 5 (extremely likely). Thus, the aggregated score for this variable would range from 14 to 70. All five media achieved acceptable level of internal consistency based on Cronbach’s alpha results: Face-to-face (0.77), email (0.74), phone call (0.72), text/apps (0.78), and fax (0.81).

Results

To test the proposed four hypotheses and find answers for the two research questions, this study employed the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 25 (SPSS 25) for data analysis.

H1 predicted that Chinese students would score higher on the cultural context scale than students in the United States. As the independent-samples t-test results indicated, a statistically significant difference was found. Chinese participants (M = 65.82 SD = 4.21) scored significantly higher than U.S. participants (M = 58.11, SD = 2.97), with a practical difference of the mean being 7.71. Thus, H1 was supported (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Independent samples t-test results for H1, H2, and RQ1.

H and RQ	M	SD	p	T	Mean difference
H1
China	65.82	4.21	.000	19.35	7.71
America	58.11	2.97
H2
Face-to-face
China	4.86	.35	.000	−3.61	−.11
America	4.97	.18
Email
China	1.87	.41	.000	−13.12	−.71
America	2.58	.60
Phone call
China	3.57	.60	.000	−6.44	−.35
America	3.92	.32
Text/apps
China	3.45	.62	.000	−17.99	1.16
America	2.29	.58
Fax
China	1.16	.37	.006	−3.61	.10
America	1.06	.25
RQ1
Face-to-face
China	67.97	2.08	.000	28.71	12.99
America	53.98	5.88
Email
China	24.88	3.30	.000	−80.07	−39.01
America	63.89	5.72
Phone call
China	38.13	3.79	.388
America	37.55	8.40
Text/apps
China	45.10	2.80	.000	35.35	18.03
America	27.08	6.40
Fax
China	16.59	1.90	.006	−3.32	−1.01
America	17.60	3.66

H2 proposed that participants in China and the U.S. would perceive the same communication medium differently in terms of its media richness level. Independent-samples t-test results revealed statistically significant findings for all five media. First, both Chinese students (M = 4.86, SD = .35) and American students (M = 4.97, SD = .18) considered face-to-face communication as the richest medium. Similarly, participants from the United States (M = 3.92, SD = .32) and China (M = 3.57, SD = .60) believed that phone call is the second richest medium. Lastly, Chinese participants (M = 1.16, SD = .37) and U.S. participants (M = 1.06, SD = .25) generally agreed that fax is the leanest medium.

In contrast, the two groups differed significantly on the media of email and text/apps. Chinese students regarded email as a lean medium (M = 1.87, SD = .41) while students in the U.S. viewed it as a relatively rich medium (M = 2.58, SD = .60). The practical difference of the mean was .71. Where Chinese participants (M = 3.45, SD = .62) viewer text/apps as a very rich medium, U.S. participant (M = 2.29, SD = .58) saw it as a relatively lean medium. The practical difference of the mean was 1.16. Therefore, H2 was supported (see Table 1).

RQ1 asked about the generally preferred media among Chinese and U.S. students when communicating with professors. Independent-samples t-test results revealed several statistically significant findings. First, Chinese students (M = 67.97, SD = 2.08) saw face-to-face communication as the most preferred medium to talk with professors when compared to U.S. students (M = 53.98, SD = 5.88). Comparatively, email was regarded as the favorite medium by U.S. participants (M = 63.89, SD = 5.72) while Chinese participants do not prefer it as much (M = 24.88, SD = 3.30). Like the media richness results, fax was not a popular choice among Chinese student (M = 16.59, SD = 1.90) or U.S. students (M = 17.60, SD = 3.66). Text/Apps was more popular among Chinese participants (M = 45.10, SD = 2.80) than American participants (M = 27.08, SD = 6.40). No statistically significant difference was found between U.S. students and Chinese students on the preference of phone call (see Table 1).

H3a and H3b proposed that perceived cultural context level would be positively associated with perceived rich media and negatively associated with perceived lean media. Linear regression tests revealed that, regarding media richness, Chinese participants’ perceived cultural context was positively associated with the medium of phone call (β = .168, p < .05), and negatively associated with text/apps (β = −.186, p < .01). For the U.S. participants, perceived cultural context was positively associated with face-to-face communication (β = .166, p < .05) and phone call (β = .213, p < .01), while negatively associated with email (β = −.194, p < .05) and fax (β = −.169, p < .05).

Based on the findings of H2, both phone call (M = 3.57) and text/apps (M = 3.45) were perceived as the relatively rich medium by Chinese participants. Comparatively, face-to-face communication (M = 4.97), email (M = 2.58), and phone call (M = 3.92) were considered as rich media, while fax (M = 1.06) was consider as a lean medium by U.S. participants. That is to say, H3a and H3b were partially supported since not all the media fit the predictions (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Linear regression test results for the relationship between cultural context and media richness.

H and RQ	p	B	T	R²
RQ3
Face-to-face
China	.309
America	.038	.166	2.093	.028
Email
China	.274
America	.015	−.194	−2.455	.038
Phone call
China	.019	.168	2.365	.028
America	.008	.213	2.701	.045
Text/apps
China	.009	−.186	−2.637	.035
America	.351
Fax
China	.628
America	.035	−.169	−2.122	.028

H4 predicted that the richer a medium is, the more likely people would choose it for communication. However, Linear regression tests indicated that the more Chinese students (β = −.172, p < .05) and U.S. students (β = −.201, p < .05) perceive email as a rich medium, the less likely they would use it. The statistically significant negative association was also found among Chinese participants on the medium of face-to-face communication (β = −.261, p < .05). Thus, H4 was not supported (see Table 3).

Table 3.

Linear regression test results for the relationship between media richness and medium choice.

H and RQ	p	B	T	R²
RQ3
Face-to-face
China	.286
America	.001	−.261	−3.361	.068
Email
China	.016	−.172	−2.422	.029
America	.012	−.201	−2.549	.040
Phone call
China	.569
America	.113
Text/apps
China	.457
America	.121
Fax
China	.141
America	.787

H5a and H5b proposed that perceived cultural context level would be positively associated with the use of relatively rich media and negatively associated with the use of relatively lean media. Linear regression tests revealed that Chinese participants’ cultural context level was negatively associated with their use of face-to-face communication (β = −.141, p < .05). Cultural context level of U.S. respondents was also negatively associated with their use of face-to-face communication (β = −.214, p < .01), while positively associated with their use of email (β = .326, p < .01) and phone call (β = .160, p < .05). Based on the result of H2, both Chinese students (M = 4.86) and U.S. students (M = 4.97) saw face-to-face communication as an extremely rich medium. However, it seems for all participants, the higher the cultural context level is, the less likely they would communicate with professors face-to-face. Since not all the media fit the predictions, H5a and H5b were partially supported (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Linear regression test results for the relationship between cultural context and medium choice.

H and RQ	p	B	T	R²
RQ3
Face-to-face
China	.049	−.141	−1.980	.020
America	.007	−.214	−2.712	.046
Email
China	.252
America	.000	.326	4.284	.106
Phone call
China	.653
America	.046	.160	2.011	.026
Text/apps
China	.457
America	.365
Fax
China	.182
America	.849

Discussion

From the perspective of high-/low-context culture, the primary goal of the current study was to find an explanation for how people in different countries chose their media for communication. Specifically, this study examined whether perceived media richness of different media is a decisive factor driving individuals’ medium choice for communication.

First, previous literature generally regarded China as a typical HC-culture society and the United States as a typical LC-culture society (e.g., Hasegawa and Gudykunst, 1998; Kim et al., 1998). Meanwhile, researchers also argued that HC-communication styles prefer indirect expression and nonverbal cues while LC-communication styles emphasize direct and explicit information exchange (Gudykunst and Nishida, 1993). Findings of the current study supported these notions with Chinese participants scoring much higher than U.S. participants on the perceived cultural context scale and generally preferring face-to-face communication over email.

Second, Richardson and Smith (2007) argued that people would consciously choose media for communication due to the inherent richness of various media channels. However, findings of the current study revealed that people in different cultures perceive the same medium differently in terms of their media richness. Explicitly speaking, people may not only perceive the same medium as rich or lean (e.g., email) but also how rich or lean a specific medium is (e.g., face-to-face). Therefore, it is rational to conclude that even though the same medium may have the same richness potential, their actual richness may differ significantly due to cultural difference or the way people utilize such medium.

Lastly, the findings of the current study also indicated that perceived media richness of a specific medium could have a negative impact on the likelihood that it would be chosen for communication, while perceived cultural context may have mixed influence on people’s media choice. One possible explanation for the result could be found in previous research on social presence theory. Collectively, previous literature argued that media high in social presence may be good at catching listeners’ attention and monitor their reactions but may also lower their ability to process complicated information (Dennis and Kinney, 1998; Kahai and Cooper, 2003; Robert and Dennis, 2005). Similarly, the conversation context or feedback that rich media may be powerful at offering could cause burden or distraction to the attention of message receivers. Thus, they may get ignored when people chose the appropriate means for communication.

Another possible explanation could be the availability of different communication media. For instance, face-to-face communication is much less convenient in the contemporary era. With the fast development of all kinds of media platforms competing for users’ attention, face-to-face communication could be less preferred even though it is an extremely rich medium. Comparatively, fax is a nearly obsolete channel for communication in both the United States and China today while phone calls are much more interruptive than other mediums, such as email or text.

Limitations

As with any research, the limitations of this particular study are necessary to discuss. First of all, the study results were gathered from online surveys, which by nature relies on self-reports of participants’ preference in hypothetical scenarios. On the one hand, changing the scenario could have some influence to the media choice of participants, while in similar real-life cases people are also not likely to overthink about media choice before acting on it. On the other hand, collectivism culture may cause Chinese participants to avoid the extreme score or even discuss their choices with peers so no one “stands out.” This cultural characteristic could be damaging to the representation ability of the data. This study somewhat blunted these concerns by giving all explicit explanation of the questions to the participants before they could make a choice. Additionally, course credits were also utilized as a reward in order to promote the seriousness of participants when filling out surveys.

Secondly, many communicating media are not hard-and-fast since technology related to media is still improving at an accelerated speed. Previous scholarship argued that the development of technology could enhance the richness of media (e.g., Culnan and Markus, 1987; El-Shinnaway and Markus, 1998; Markus, 1994). In specific, a simple text on a phone app could be low in media richness, but nowadays many chatting apps, such as WeChat, allow users to do video calling. The media richness level of such behavior could reach a level as high as face-to-face communication. Thus, it is expected that people’s media preference would change due to technology improvement.

Future directions

Even though the current study is intentionally designed to minimize the influence of other variables that may shift people’s media choices, it is crucial that these aspects be recognized. Convenience is a crucial factor in this case, and message efficiency is another. As discussed above, even with the highest level of media richness, face-to-face communication is quite inconvenient if compared to other modern ways. Along with the more convenient means of phone calls and texts/apps, these three mediums all process the feature of instantaneously message exchanging. In this case, email and fax are convenient to use, but message exchange would require a much longer time than the other communication means.

The issue of privacy and power distance can also be potentially influential to the media choice for people within diverse cultures. Using mediums such as email, text, or fax would give more respect to the privacy of the respondents since they have the privilege to decides when or even whether to respond to the received message. Comparatively, face-to-face communication and phone calls generally cannot provide such luxury. Meanwhile, it is reasonable to expect that relatively formal ways of communication would be more suitable between people with high power distance, and casual ways would serve people with low power-distance better. Within the scenario of the current study, which was the communication between college students and their professors, face-to-face communication and fax would be relatively formal while text/app and phone calls would be less formal. Email might be formal in the U.S. but in China, when the email is used, it would be more likely in casual settings.

This study provided some basic patterns and reasons about how and why people in different cultures prefer to communicate. The more we understand the different communication norms, the more comfortable we can launch our communication without confliction and unexpected obstacles. Future studies may examine the related topic in different social situations or investigate the other factors that also influence people’s choice of communication media. Specifically, from the perspectives of power distance, collectivism/individualism culture dimension, uncertainty avoidance, and technology development.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jue Hou

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