Health Psychology Research / HPR / Online First / DOI: 10.14440/hpr.2699711
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Cross-cultural Differences in the Relationship between Personality Traits and Mobile and Internet Addiction

Pavel Veselský1 ,  Lucie Váchová2 ,  Jana Kvintová2 ,  Vojtech Regec2 ,  Hongyang Liu2*
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1 Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Moravia 779 00, Czech Republic
2 Department of Psychology and Abnormal Psychology, Faculty of Education, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Moravia 779 00, Czech Republic
HPR 2025, 13(2), e81240006 https://doi.org/10.14440/hpr.2699711
Submitted: 16 March 2025 | Accepted: 5 April 2025 | Published: 19 June 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Background

The widespread use of the Internet and mobile phones has introduced significant addiction-related challenges.

Objective

This study investigates the role of personality in mobile phone and internet addiction across two cultural contexts.

Methods

A total of 1,075 Czech (84.9% female) and 710 Chinese (54.6% female) university students participated in this study. Data were collected using the Smartphone Addiction Scale, Internet Addiction Test, and Ten-Item Personality Measure, and analyzed using multiple regression models to assess cross-cultural differences.

Results

Significantly higher addiction rates were found among Chinese students. Among Czech students, internet addiction decreased with higher levels of conscientiousness (b=−1.11), emotional stability (b=−0.60), and openness (b=−0.42), explaining 16% of the variance. For Chinese students, only conscientiousness (b=−1.23) had a significant effect, explaining 6% of the variance. Openness differed significantly between groups (p=0.02). Regarding mobile phone addiction, both groups showed similar patterns, with addiction decreasing as agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness increased. Conscientiousness had a stronger impact among Chinese students (difference=0.98, p=0.008).

Conclusion

Further analysis indicated that the influence of personality on addiction varied by sex and country. These findings underscore the importance of personality and cultural factors in understanding technology addiction.

Keywords
Internet addiction
Mobile phone addiction
Personality traits
Cross-cultural differences
Funding
This study was supported by the following project: the internal grant “Selected topics of psychological research in the field of educational psychology” (grant number: IGA_011_2024), and the institutional project Dean’s Grant 2025 (grant number: GFD_Pdf_ 2025_02).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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