Thanh Thao Phung

Type of the article: Research Article

Cybercrime is an increasingly visible digital safety concern for young adults in Vietnam, particularly for university students who rely heavily on social media for communication, learning, and risk-related information. This cross-sectional study examines the associations between social media use, legal awareness of cybercrime, media influence and misinformation exposure, family-school education, personal safety anxiety, and cybercrime risk perception and preventive awareness. Data were collected from 746 adult respondents in Vietnam, almost all of them were undergraduate students aged 18-24, and analyzed using EFA, CFA, CB-SEM, and bootstrap resampling. The results indicate that personal safety anxiety is the strongest correlate of cybercrime risk perception and preventive awareness. Family-school education, legal awareness, media influence and misinformation exposure, and social media use are also positively associated with both anxiety and the outcome construct. Indirect associations through personal safety anxiety were observed for all four antecedents, with the strongest indirect association involving family-school education. The findings should be interpreted as associational rather than causal because the data are cross-sectional and self-reported. The study contributes to socio-legal and communication research by showing how informational, legal, educational, and emotional factors jointly relate to cybercrime-related awareness among Vietnamese university students.