Abstract
Previous research has shown that people seldom experience privacy violations while using the Internet, such as unwanted and unknown sharing of personal information, credit card fraud, or identity theft. With this study, we ask whether individuals’ online privacy concerns increase and online information disclosure decreases if they experience such a worst-case scenario. Using representative data from a five-wave panel study (n ¼ 745), we found that people who generally experience more privacy violations also have stronger privacy concerns (between-person differences). However, people who experienced more privacy violations than usual in the last 6 months were only slightly more concerned afterward and did not change their disclosure behavior afterward (within-person effects). The need for privacy moderated these processes. We untangle under which circumstances such experiences may be transformative, and discuss practical and conceptual consequences of how experiences translate into concerns, but not necessarily behaviors.
Original language | English |
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Article number | hqaa012 |
Pages (from-to) | 49-74 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Human Communication Research |
Volume | 47 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Funding number: 16KIS0094) awarded to Sabine Trepte.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Funding
This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Funding number: 16KIS0094) awarded to Sabine Trepte.
Keywords
- Bayesian Statistics
- Longitudinal Analysis
- Online Information Disclosure
- Online Privacy Concerns
- Privacy Violations
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Transformative or Not? How Privacy Violation Experiences Influence Online Privacy Concerns and Online Information Disclosure'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Prizes
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ICA Top Faculty Paper Award of the division „Communication and Technology“
Masur, Philipp K. (Recipient) & Trepte, Sabine (Recipient), 2019
Prize / Grant: Prize › Academic