Understanding location disclosure behaviour via social networks sites: a perspective of communication privacy management theory

Abstract

Along with the increasing popularity of social network sites (SNSs) and GPS mobile devices, check-in has become one of the most popular location-based information sharing activities. Drawing from the communication privacy management theory with the complement of a privacy calculus model, we argue that six factors, privacy risk, benefit, context, culture, motivation, and gender, impact Facebook users' likelihood of checking in. The data was collected from a field experiment with 240 participants, where the privacy risks and benefits were manipulated to increase the variance in the empirical survey. The results indicate the positive impacts of users' perceived benefit and three dimensions of motivation on their location sharing intention, while privacy risk has a negative influence on that intention. Gender and culture were found to have no significant influence. Our findings also highlight the importance of user context in location disclosure behaviour via SNSs. Theoretical implications and practical suggestions are discussed accordingly.