A Study INVESTIGATING the Effect of Adolescent Lifestyles on Experience with Sexual Commoditization Involving the Use of Smartphone in KOREA : Validating the Mediating Effect on Sexual Awareness Level

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study was to validate the effect of adolescent lifestyles on the experience of sexual commoditization involving the use of smartphone. Moreover, this study was intended to verify whether unde-sirable sexual awareness would have a significant effect as mediator. Sexual commoditization involving the use of smartphone has become a rampant problem in contemporary society. Although many preceding studies have been conducted to identify the causes of sexual commoditization, no convincing policy implication has been derived. Thus, this study aims to derive preventive measures and countermeasure policy system against situations prone to crime and promote education to adolescents by examining the effect of adolescent lifestyles on the experience with sexual commoditization involving the use of smartphones and validate whether mediating fac-tors are associated with undesirable sexual awareness based on the results substantiated through this study. The data used in this study were obtained from the results of panel survey conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute in 2014 and were analyzed through 4,163 data excluding 193 missing data out of 4,356 data. For analysis, IBM SPSS Statistics 21 was used. Moreover, the study intended to validate theoretically whether routine activities online, not offline, could lead to crimes by considering current smartphone use among adoles-cents from the perspective of Routine Activity Theory specified by Lawrence Cohen & Marcus Felson. For analytical methodology, t-test was performed on adolescents experience and non-experience with sex-ual commoditization to verify statistically significant factors by group. Furthermore, binomial logistic regression analysis was carried out to verify the effect that adolescent lifestyles, the independent variable, and sexual awareness level, the mediator, would have on adolescents experience with sexual commoditization. Addition-ally, the study validated the mediating effect through Sobel test, preceded by verification of the effect of inde-pendent variable on mediator. The results of this study suggested that the 3 factors of adolescent lifestyles, the independent variable, had a very significant influence on adolescents experience with sexual commoditization. Sexual awareness level, the mediator, was also found to have a very significant influence on the experience with sexual commoditization. The results of Sobel test showed that mediator had a significant mediating effect through partial mediation. In conclusion, Routine Activity Theory was found to be applicable even to online activities, such as the use of smartphone, in connection with adolescent lifestyles. Such routine lives of adolescents have an effect on sexual awareness level which in turn was found to be a crucial factor for experience with sexual commoditization. Thus, it would be necessary to explore effective al-ternative solutions at policy level, including prevention through increased attention and proper education at home and schools towards adolescents.