Abstract
This study aims to understand the capabilities that an individual needs to better communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds in digital contexts. From a literature review, an initial pool of knowledge, skills, abilities and motivations needed in online cross-cultural communication was gathered. Then, a survey was conducted with 345 Chinese participants to identify the factor structure of the necessary capabilities. The results derived a seven-factor model named BESTCIM, comprising behavior, external motivation, social-oriented knowledge, task-oriented knowledge, cultural-theoretical knowledge, intrinsic motivation and metacognition. Further, the factors’ influences on participants’ online cross-cultural communication performance were examined. The regression results indicated cultural-theoretical knowledge, social-oriented knowledge, intrinsic motivation, external motivation, and behavior can positively predict the self-rated cross-cultural communication performance. Overall, our findings established a structured foundation to better understand factors influencing cross-cultural communication in digital contexts, providing a theoretical basis for empirical studies on virtual team collaboration and international talent training.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Professor Pei-Luen Patrick Rau for his guidance and advice on this research. We thank Zhi Guo, Hanjing Huang, Jian Zheng, Xin Lei and Xiaofang Sun for their contribution to the review of the draft questionnaire and discussion of potential items.
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Qie, N., Kang, X. (2023). Capabilities Influencing Cross-Cultural Communication in Digital Contexts: Exploration with a Chinese Sample. In: Rau, PL.P. (eds) Cross-Cultural Design. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35939-2_10
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