Predicting adolescents’ willingness to disclose personal information to a commercial website: Testing the applicability of a trust-based model

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the level of trust that adolescents place in a specific commercial website and their behavioural intentions to disclose four categories of personal information (identity information, geographical information, profile information and contact information) to the website. Following the integrative model of organisational trust, we hypothesise that respondents’ level of trust in a specific commercial website is determined by three dimensions of trustworthiness: ability, integrity and benevolence. In order to test the proposed model, we conducted a survey among 1042 Flemish adolescents. Analyses indicate that perceived ability and integrity predicted adolescents’ level of trust in the focal website. The respondents’ trust in the website subsequently predicted their willingness to disclose. The influence of the discerned trustworthiness beliefs was fully mediated by the level of trust adolescents had in the specific commercial website. Adolescents’ risk perception about disclosing information to this website also affected their willingness to disclose information. Finally, our analysis identified an individual’s disposition to trust (i.e. trust propensity) as significantly predicting (1) the three trustworthiness beliefs and (2) the willingness to disclose the four discerned categories of personal information. Surprisingly no significant association was found between trust propensity and adolescents’ trust in the specific commercial website.