An investigation of a dynamic model of privacy trade-off in use of mobile social network applications: A longitudinal perspective

摘要

This study examines the dynamic relationship between perceived privacy concerns and use behaviors of a new social networking application (SNA) over time. By integrating the theory of belief updating and an extended privacy trade-off model from a longitudinal perspective as the basis for theoretical underpinning, this study proposes a privacy trade-off model showing the role of initial use and initial self-disclosure on updating users' pre-perceptions of using a new SNA to initial perceptions of using it. The trade-off between pre-privacy concern and pre-perceived benefit determines the initial SNA usage and self-disclosure behaviors. Then, initial privacy trade-off determines the continued use behavior and continued self-disclosure. Using an empirical data collected three phases from actual mobile app users, this study validates the proposed model and hypotheses. Including the proposed dynamic model of privacy trade-off, this study provides important contributions to theory and practice in the privacy literature.