Construing online consumers’ information privacy decisions: The impact of psychological distance

Abstract

The role of subjective distance and mental representations in understanding consumers’ information privacy decisions is underexplored in the literature. This study draws on construal level theory and power-responsibility equilibrium framework of privacy to explain consumer privacy behavior based on the interplay between three psychological constructs, namely, privacy concerns, privacy empowerment, and the psychological distance of privacy. This study empirically validates the psychological distance of privacy construct and the results indicate the capability of psychological distance to explain privacy behavior and to moderate the relationship between privacy concerns and privacy behavior. The findings also suggest that empowered consumers’ privacy behavior does not vary despite the degree of psychological distance. Our findings have implications for the privacy scholarship, consumers and e-commerce system developers.