Examining Users’ Willingness to Post Sensitive Personal Data on Social Media

O’La Hmoud Al-Laymoun,Ali Aljaafreh

doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2020.0111255

O’La Hmoud Al-Laymoun, Ali Aljaafreh

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.14569/ijacsa.2020.0111255

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Abstract

Reaping the vast benefits of ubiquitous social media requires users to share their information, preferences, and interests on these websites. This research draws on communications privacy management theory and the online privacy literature to develop and validate an empirical research model testing users’ willingness to share sensitive data on Facebook. The data were collected using an online survey from 569 respondents, however; 515 responses were valid for the statistical analysis. The valid data were analyzed using SMART-PLS2. The findings showed the need for attention as a significant predictor of Facebook users’ willingness. Neither individual perceptions of privacy control nor privacy risks had an impact on the variable of interest. Furthermore, the evidence supported the positive impact of each of deposition to value privacy and the perceived effectiveness of Facebook’s privacy policy on mitigating Facebook users’ perceptions of the risks of posting their private data on the website. The paper discusses the study’s theoretical and managerial implications along with its limitations.

Highlights

Facebook is the largest social network, with about 2.5 billion monthly active worldwide users as of December 31, 2019 [1]
The study leverages the extant literature on privacy to develop and to empirically examine a research model combining communication privacy management theory (CPMT) and the need for attention construct to understand better what motivates or hinders users from revealing their private data on social networking sites (SNSs)
The results showed that the proposed model accounts for about 11.8% of the dependent variable, indicating that more investigation is still needed in this regard

Summary

Introduction

Facebook is the largest social network, with about 2.5 billion monthly active worldwide users as of December 31, 2019 [1]. It is not surprising that increasing numbers of people are joining Facebook, as it offers its users a wide range of benefits. According to a 2018 report by Forbes.com, more than 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook daily, and about 510,000 comments and 293,000 status updates are posted on the website every minute. Privacy protection is especially challenging in the era of social networking, as the world does not have or enforce the right laws and regulations to deal with a rapidly changing digital environment [3]. Examples of online self-protection behaviors include managing privacy preferences and sharing information with websites that promise not to share that information with third parties [4]

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