This study investigates uncertainty avoidance of ethnic groups differentiated by age and gender. A total of 5,126 respondents, including 11 different ethnic groups (from Europe and Asia), participated in an online survey. The findings support that women were more uncertainty avoidant than men in five ethnic groups, namely, Bulgarian, French, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese. The opposite was seen for the Spanish and Vietnamese ethnic groups in which the women were more uncertainty tolerant. These gender differences were independent of age. The study points out the importance of self-categorization as an indicator of ethnic groups. This type of ethnic identification is related to the commonly used cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance.
Universe: In the 2017–2019 period, a total of 5,126 members of 11 groups participated in a series of cross-cultural investigations. We researched factors that influenced the behavioural intentions of consumers online. In these investigations, the dimension uncertainty avoidance was used to understand cultural differences in online behaviour. Cross-cultural comparisons were made for a variety of factors in consumer behaviour, such as trust and privacy (Broeder 2020), colour (Broeder & Van Doremalen 2021), and celebrity endorsement (Broeder & Goorden 2019), In all these investigations, the scale given by Jung and Kellaris (2004) was used to measure uncertainty avoidance. In the present study, the values of this scale are combined and analysed further for the demographic factors of gender and age. Country / Nation: 11 different cultural groups across Asia (Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore), Eastern Europe (Greece, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria), and Western Europe (Spain, France, the Netherlands). The dataset contains the cleaned SPSS data file including a codebook ("uncertain_ALL.sav"), and a data report including additional metadata and documentation ("Data report - Broeder - Cultural Uncertainty.pdf").