A Study of the Effect of Privacy Assurance Mechanisms on Self-disclosure in Social Networking Sites from the View of Protection Motivation Theory Completed Research Paper

摘要

Along with recent advancement of web technologies, social networking sites (SNSs) affect people's life styles by enabling them to perform different activities which are not easy to do before. Predominant uses of SNSs allow users to quickly access and easily share personal information. In turn, users' information privacy issues become important challenge. Drawing upon Protection Motivation Theory, this research investigates the effect of privacy assurance mechanisms (i.e., privacy assurance statements and privacy customization features) on users' privacy concern and disclosure behavior. The results show that privacy assurance statements significantly influence SNS users' privacy concern by affecting users' assessment of threat susceptibility and effectiveness of assurance mechanisms; privacy customization features significantly influence users' self-efficacy and perceived effectiveness of assurance mechanisms; SNS users'privacy concern results form a risk calculus process in which users assess the threat and available coping mechanisms; and the effect of privacy concern on self-disclosure mediates by users' protection motivation.