Combating cyberbullying with transparency: unveiling the impact of IP location disclosure on cyberbullying in Chinese social media.

The Internet has transformed into a vital communication hub in daily life, yet cyberbullying has concurrently escalated, posing a critical societal concern. To tackle this issue, the Chinese government has mandated that major social media platforms disclose users’ IP locations. However, it is currently unclear about the effectiveness of this measure in reducing cyberbullying and the underlying mechanisms. Drawing on impression management theory, we conducted three experiments across three prominent social platforms in China, aiming to explore how the display of IP locations affects cyberbullying through impression management motivation and the contingent role of group identity. Our findings indicate that disclosing IP locations decreases cyberbullying behavior by bolstering individuals’ impression management motivation. Notably, this effect is more evident among those with a stronger sense of group identity. Moreover, we rigorously examined and excluded alternative explanations, such as moral disengagement and privacy concerns, ensuring the robustness of our findings. This research not only offers theoretical enlightenment on suppressing cyberbullying from an IT design standpoint but also extends practical guidance to internet policymakers, social platform managers, and all other stakeholders implicated in the issue of cyberbullying.