Investigating Privacy and Information Disclosure Behavior in Social Electronic Commerce

Yuan Sun,Shuyue Fang,Yujong Hwang

doi:10.3390/su11123311

Yuan Sun, Shuyue Fang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11123311

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Abstract

Social e-commerce has steadily emerged as a current trend for an enormous amount of Internet users. Despite the popularity and prevalence of social e-commerce, many users hesitate to disclose their information due to privacy concerns. This resistance from users impedes the development of social e-commerce enterprises. In order to help enterprises collect more user information and establish better development strategies, this research builds on the Privacy Antecedent-Privacy Concern-Outcomes (APCO) model and the theory of privacy calculus. This research investigates how the privacy antecedents of hot topic interactivity and group buying experience influence users’ privacy concerns and perceived benefits as well as how to further influence users’ information disclosure behavior. The results from 406 questionnaire responses indicate that hot topic interactivity and group buying experience have significant negative impacts on privacy concerns and significant positive impacts on perceived benefits. Privacy concerns negatively influence the behavior of information disclosure while perceived benefits positively influence the behavior of information disclosure. Based on these results, social e-commerce enterprises should promote users’ behaviors of hot topic interactivity and group buying to stimulate users’ information disclosure behavior.

Highlights

As a new mode of commerce, online shopping is preferred by a large number of consumers due to its convenience and its vast availability of relatively cheap commodities
Using a combination of the two theories above, this study explores how the mechanisms of hot topic interactivity and group buying experience influence privacy concerns, perceived benefits, and users’ information disclosure behavior in social e-commerce
Since the background of this research was e-commerce platforms based on social media, such as Sina Weibo, users of these online social media platforms were more experienced with hot topic interactivity, group buying, and information disclosure

Summary

Introduction

As a new mode of commerce, online shopping is preferred by a large number of consumers due to its convenience and its vast availability of relatively cheap commodities. The number of online shopping users is increasing rapidly as the scale of the market continues to expand, showing the strong momentum of e-commerce development. Social e-commerce is the new current trend. In 2011, Pinterest, a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interests by posting (known as ‘pinning’ on) images or videos to their own or others’ boards (i.e., a collection of ‘pins’, usually with a common theme) and browsing what other users have pinned emerged overseas and the development of social e-commerce accelerated.

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