Do individuals disclose or withhold information following the same logic: a configurational perspective of information disclosure in social media
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-06-2021-0180 |
| Published date | 20 January 2022 |
| Date | 20 January 2022 |
| Pages | 710-726 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Yongqiang Sun,Fei Zhang,Yafei Feng |
Do individuals disclose or withhold
information following the same
logic: a configurational perspective
of information disclosure in
social media
Yongqiang Sun
Center for Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China and
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, and
Fei Zhang and Yafei Feng
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aimed to explain why individuals still tend to disclose their privacy information even
when privacy risks are high and whether individuals disclose or withhold information following the same logic.
Design/methodology/approach –This study develops a configurational decision tree model (CDTM) for
precisely understanding individuals’decision-making process of privacy disclosure. A survey of location-
based social network service (LBSNS) users was conducted to collect data, and fuzzy-set qualitative
comparative analysis (fsQCA) was adopted to validate the hypotheses.
Findings –This paper identified two configurations for high and low disclosure, respectively, and found that
the benefits and the risks did not function independently but interdependently, and the justice would play a
crucial role when both the benefits and the risks were high. Furthermore, the authors found that there were
asymmetric mechanisms for high disclosure and low disclosure, and males focused more on perceived
usefulness, while females concerned more about perceived enjoyment, privacy risks and perceived justice.
Originality/value –This paper further extends privacy calculus model (PCM) and deepens the understanding of
the privacy calculus process from a configurational perspective. In addition, this study also provides guidance for
future research on how to adopt the configurational approach with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to revise
and improve relevant theories for information systems (IS) behavioral research.
Keywords Information disclosure, Privacy calculus, Causal asymmetry, Configurational perspective, Fuzzy-
set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The emergence of privacy issues is synchronized with the development of information
technology (Westin, 2003). In the digital age, theadvancement of science and technology has
realized instantconnectivity of human beings,and a growing number of people are willing to
enjoy convenientonline services by sharingtheir personal information (Trepte et al.,2020).For
example, withthe rise of location-basedservices (LBSs), peoplegradually tend to disclose their
location information to enjoy related value-added services based on location information.
However,with increasing degrees ofconnectedness through smartmobile terminals and social
mediaengagement, the risks ofusers’privacy violationsincrease correspondingly(Gerhart and
Koohikamali,2019), which inevitablytriggers users’privacyconcerns. Therefore, it is expected
AJIM
74,4
710
The work described in this paper was partially supported by the grants from the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Project No. 71974148, 71904149, 71921002), the Humanities and Social
Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education, China (Project 17YJC630157).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 30 June 2021
Revised 1 November 2021
1 January 2022
Accepted 6 January 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 4, 2022
pp. 710-726
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-06-2021-0180
that users would control the disclosure of privacy information when they realize the privacy
risks arerelatively high. Nevertheless,a very confusingphenomenon is that evenif users know
that privacy risks are high, they still disclose their privacy information for some convenient
services, which isknown as “privacy paradox.”
The privacy calculus model (PC M) provides an approach to unde rstanding the
phenomenon of privacy paradox, which emphasizes that individuals make decisions about
privacy disclose by weighing the risks and benefits (Dinev and Hart, 2006). Up to now, the
PCM has received considerable empirical supports in diverse research contexts, such as
e-commerce (Fortes and Rita, 2016;Zhu et al., 2017), personalized service (Kang and
Namkung, 2019;Zhu et al., 2017), healthcare (Jin, 2012;Princi and Kr€
amer, 2020) and social
networking sites (Krasnova et al., 2012;Shibchurn and Yan, 2015;Guo et al., 2019). Although
previous studies based on the PCM have explained privacy disclosure behavior to a certain
extent, there are still several issues that need to be further discussed.
First, it is easy to understand the decision-making process in the situation with obvious
net values (e.g. high benefits –low risks or low benefits –high risks), while it is difficult to
understand how individuals make decisions when both benefits and risks are high. A
nuanced analysis of the underlying mechanism shows that individuals will consider the
tradeoff of benefits and risks rather than each side independently. So, the interdependence
between benefits and risks may better reflect the privacy calculus process. However, prior
studies just test the independent effects of the benefits or the risks on privacy disclosure
behavior (Dinev and Hart, 2006;Zhu et al., 2017), ignoring the interdependence between the
benefits and the risks. Hence, this study pays attention to the interdependency between
benefits and risks in individuals’privacy decision-making process.
Second, previous research findings indicate that individuals may disclose their privacy
information no matter privacy risks are low or high (Taddicken, 2014), which confirms that there
are multiple solutions leading to disclosure behavior. A nuanced analysis of the underlying
mechanism of privacy disclosure behavior shows that the reasons are complex, and different
combinations of conditions can generate different results. Furthermore, individuals’disclosure
behavior and withholding behavior may follow different logics. Recent investigations confirmthat
individuals make decisions on these two outcomes in different ways (Acquistiet al., 2016), and the
causes of withholding behaviors cannot be directly deduced from the causes of disclosure
behaviors. However, most of the previous studies were based on symmetric thinking to explore the
linear relationships between the antecedent variables and privacy disclosure behaviors, which
could not completely explain multiple solutions leading to disclosure behavior and withholding
behavior. Therefore, to precisely understand the privacy calculus process, it calls for re-examining
the decision-making process and viewing it from a holistic and asymmetry perspective.
Third, the justice theory holds that individuals feel motivated to take action and are
influenced by a sense of fairness. Some scholars have found that perceived justice has a
significant impact on individuals’privacy disclosure behaviors (Culnan and Armstrong,
1999;Son and Kim, 2008), and it has become a factor that cannot be ignored when individuals
make decisions about privacy disclosure. Although the existing literature studies on privacy
calculus suggest that the result of benefit-cost calculus will work as a vital role in individuals’
privacy decision-making process (Sun et al., 2015), the construct (i.e. justice) that can reflect
the result of benefit-cost calculus has not been proposed and tested as a key factor in their
models. Previous studies lack empirical research on whether or not perceived justice works as
the theory implies, which prevents us from precisely understanding individuals’decision-
making process of privacy disclosure. Hence, drawing on justice theory (Adams, 1963), this
study regards perceived justice as the construct that represents the result of benefit-cost
calculus and tests its role in individuals’privacy decision-making process.
To address the interdependency between the benefits and the risks, multiple solutions and
the asymmetric effects, it calls for a research paradigm shift from the variance perspective to
The process of
privacy
disclosure
711
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