Personal information disclosure on social networking sites

Abstract

The rapid growth in consumers' adoption of social networking sites revolutionized the marketing landscape, transforming the way brands communicate with their customers. At the same time, the widespread popularity of social networking sites raised major concerns about the privacy and security of users' personal information on these platforms. Drawing on social identity, and privacy calculus theories, this study examines the roles of consumer-social networking site relational dimensions, namely personal information disclosure and social networking sites identification as drivers of consumer brand engagement on social networking sites-hosted brand pages. We show that the extent of consumer-social networking site identification and the degree to which consumers disclose personal information on a social networking site affect their engagement with other brands hosted on that platform.Online survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of US consumers (n = 506) and empirically tested through structural equation modeling provide overall support to the proposed model. This study contributes to the literature by being the first to empirically demonstrate the spillover effects of consumer-social networking site relational attributes to online consumer brand engagement. The findings provide guidance to marketing managers seeking to increase brand engagement on social media.

Digital technologies and privacy: State of the art and research directions

“…Future research is required here not to add additional drivers of privacy concerns, but rather to combine the evidence from previous studies in a single, consistent, theoretical framework. In this vein, Maseeh et al (2021) offer a metanalysis of privacy studies, while Aboulnasr, et al (2022) offer a literature review table focused specifically on privacy in communication.…”

“…However, recent research on systematic crosscultural differences in "consumers" privacy-related attitudes and behaviors remains scant. Not surprisingly, multiple researchers (e.g., Aboulnasr et al, 2022;Cowan et al, 2021;Ioannou et al, 2021) advocate for future research that examines the role of culture.…”

“…In this vein, Maseeh et al (2021) offer a metanalysis of privacy studies, while Aboulnasr, et al. (2022) offer a literature review table focused specifically on privacy in communication.…”

“…However, recent research on systematic cross‐cultural differences in “consumers” privacy‐related attitudes and behaviors remains scant. Not surprisingly, multiple researchers (e.g., Aboulnasr et al, 2022; Cowan et al, 2021; Ioannou et al, 2021) advocate for future research that examines the role of culture. Whereas “consumers” experience and fluency with digital technologies may vary across countries and set up different privacy expectations, the more interesting avenues for future inquiry lie in the interaction of specific cultural difference variables and the digital context.…”

“…Communication privacy is the notion that consumers should be able to share information digitally so that it will only be accessible to their intended recipients. It is particularly relevant to digital communication, and the most frequent research setting is social media (Aboulnasr et al, 2022; Martin & Palmatier, 2020). Privacy concerns have increased over time due to data breaches and data mismanagement by social media companies, such as the Cambridge Analytica data breach of Facebook users in 2018.…”