Research on Privacy Paradox in Social Network Sites under the Perspective of Construal Level Theory
Recently, users of social network sites (SNS) have serious concerns over privacy problems. However, they continue to share personal information freely on SNS. The contradiction between privacy concerns and self-disclosure behavior has attracted significant attention of a large number of researchers. Under the perspective of construal level theory and combining Privacy Calculus, Trust theory, and Theory of Planned Behavior, we propose a theoretical framework and test its questionnaire survey. We aim to explore the existence of the paradox and attempt to explain the phenomenon. The results indicate that the SNS user's concerns over privacy problems have a significant effect on people's distant-future intention only. This low disclosure intention is inconsistent with their actual behavior. Con-sequently, the SNS users' privacy concern and disclosure behavior are paradoxical. The perceived benefits affect the people's behavior through the mediator of near-future intention, which is the dominant factor of disclosure behavior. Furthermore, trust remarkably moderates the negative effect of the privacy concern to the disclosure intention, which results in the insignificant relationship between concerns and behavior. This paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence on the mechanisms of privacy paradox and helps the SNS providers in optimizing their service.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
