Understanding the key antecedents of users' disclosing behaviors on social networking sites: The privacy paradox

Abstract

This study explored the formation mechanisms of users' disclosing behaviors from the perspectives of the privacy paradox. The theoretical framework incorporates perceived control over personal information and subjective norms into the privacy calculus model. The proposed theoretical framework was empirically tested using survey data collected from 350 Facebook users. The findings show that users' intention to disclose personal information has a marginally significant effect on users' disclosing behaviors. The analysis results reveal that privacy concerns negatively affect the intention to disclose personal information while they are not significantly related to users' disclosing behaviors. This study found that perceived control over personal information plays a significant role in enhancing trust in social network site (SNS) providers, users' intention to disclose personal information, and users' disclosing behaviors. Moreover, perceived control over personal information mitigates the level of privacy concerns. Several implications for research and practice are described.