The Role of Privacy Fatigue in Privacy Paradox: A PSM and Heterogeneity Analysis

Abstract

Powerful rising trends of mobile media platforms have also resulted in the escalation of users’ privacy concerns. However, there is a paradox between users’ attitudes towards privacy and their actual privacy disclosure behaviors. This study attempts to explain the phenomenon of privacy paradox in the mobile social media context from the privacy fatigue perspective. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and employing the method of Propensity Score Matching (PSM), this paper confirmed that privacy fatigue could directly explain the privacy paradox. Among the findings, cynicism turned the relationship between privacy concern and privacy protection behaviors from positive influence to negative influence, while emotional exhaustion would weaken the positive influence relationship between privacy concern and the intention to undertake privacy protection behaviors. In addition, the study also revealed the heterogeneous effects of individual characteristics and usage characteristics variables on how the privacy fatigue influences privacy paradox.

Privacy paradox resolution in mHealth: the moderating effect of rationality degree

“…The emergence of the privacy paradox is not only from an imbalance between perceived benefits and privacy concerns but is also affected by various cognitive biases and heuristics (Chhabra, 2022;Tian et al, 2022). The above characteristics of the privacy paradox are consistent with the fundamental principle of rational choice theory, which includes three components: preferences, beliefs, and constraints.…”

“…On the other hand, extensive studies believe that the privacy paradox also has a significant influence on individuals' decision-making. In the e-commerce and social media context, researchers have found that privacy concerns are not consistent with information disclosure intention because of the effect of the privacy paradox (Shih and Liu, 2023;Tian et al, 2022;Li and Guo, 2022). Especially in the healthcare field, despite reported high levels of privacy concerns, individuals still show a strong willingness to submit their information for more perceived medical, psychological, and social benefits (Fox, 2020;Zhu et al, 2021).…”

“…Existing studies mainly focused on examining the antecedents and consequences of the privacy paradox. On the one hand, researchers have studied the factors affecting the privacy paradox from a technological, organizational, and individual level, and found that technical transparency (Zhang et al, 2023), psychological characteristics (Ying et al, 2023;Tian et al, 2022), privacy cynicism (Tian et al, 2022) and other factors have the significant influence on it. On the other hand, extensive studies believe that the privacy paradox also has a significant influence on individuals' decision-making.…”

“…, 2023), psychological characteristics (Ying et al. , 2023; Tian et al. , 2022), privacy cynicism (Tian et al.…”

Research on the influence mechanism of privacy invasion experiences with privacy protection intentions in social media contexts: Regulatory focus as the moderator

“…Such social media characteristics as internet privacy threat experience and privacy invasion could lead to users' sense of emotional exhaustion and privacy cynicism, which was further associated with social media privacy fatigue (Xiao and Mou, 2019 ; Sheng et al, 2022 ). In terms of the outcomes, some other studies focusing on the privacy paradox found that emotional exhaustion and powerlessness (the same concept as exhaustion) would weaken the positive influence relationship between privacy concerns and their willingness to protect personal information (Tian et al, 2022 ). On account of the above reviews, it is reasonable to analogize that an individual's privacy invasion experience in the context of social media use can exacerbate an individual's perception of privacy fatigue.…”