Context and Privacy Concerns in Friend Request Decisions

Friend request acceptance and information disclosure constitute 2 important privacy decisions for users to control the flow of their personal information in social network sites (SNSs). These decisions are greatly influenced by contextual characteristics of the request. However, the contextual influence may not be uniform among users with different levels of privacy concerns. In this study, we hypothesize that users with higher privacy concerns may consider contextual factors differently from those with lower privacy concerns. By conducting a scenario‐based survey study and structural equation modeling, we verify the interaction effects between privacy concerns and contextual factors. We additionally find that users' perceived risk towards the requester mediates the effect of context and privacy concerns. These results extend our understanding about the cognitive process behind privacy decision making in SNSs. The interaction effects suggest strategies for SNS providers to predict user's friend request acceptance and to customize context‐aware privacy decision support based on users' different privacy attitudes.

[1]  H. Jeff Smith,et al.  Information Privacy: Measuring Individuals' Concerns About Organizational Practices , 1996, MIS Q..

[2]  Hyejin Park,et al.  Why do people share their context information on Social Network Services? A qualitative study and an experimental study on users' behavior of balancing perceived benefit and risk , 2013, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[3]  Krishna P. Gummadi,et al.  Analyzing facebook privacy settings: user expectations vs. reality , 2011, IMC '11.

[4]  Pamela J. Wisniewski,et al.  Making privacy personal: Profiling social network users to inform privacy education and nudging , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[5]  HongJason,et al.  Understanding and capturing people's privacy policies in a mobile social networking application , 2009 .

[6]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking application , 2009, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[7]  MinJinyoung.  Personal information concerns and provision in social network sites , 2016 .

[8]  Celine Latulipe,et al.  Contextual gaps: privacy issues on Facebook , 2009, Ethics and Information Technology.

[9]  Hongxia Jin,et al.  Predicting Privacy Behavior on Online Social Networks , 2015, ICWSM.

[10]  P KnijnenburgBart,et al.  Making privacy personal , 2017 .

[11]  Hock-Hai Teo,et al.  The Role of Push-Pull Technology in Privacy Calculus: The Case of Location-Based Services , 2009, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[12]  Tamara Dinev,et al.  Internet privacy concerns and their antecedents - measurement validity and a regression model , 2004, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[13]  Alessandro Acquisti,et al.  Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook , 2006, Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

[14]  Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa,et al.  Consumer Trust in an Internet Store: A Cross-Cultural Validation , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[15]  Daniel G. Goldstein,et al.  Choice without Awareness: Ethical and Policy Implications of Defaults , 2013 .

[16]  Jinyoung Min,et al.  How are people enticed to disclose personal information despite privacy concerns in social network sites? The calculus between benefit and cost , 2015, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[17]  Richard Chbeir,et al.  Privacy in Online Social Networks , 2013, Security and Privacy Preserving in Social Networks.

[18]  Anind K. Dey,et al.  Who wants to know what when? privacy preference determinants in ubiquitous computing , 2003, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[19]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  Georg Simmel's Concept of the Stranger and Intercultural Communication Research , 1999 .

[20]  Jose M. Such,et al.  Sharing Policies in Multiuser Privacy Scenarios: Incorporating Context, Preferences, and Arguments in Decision Making , 2016 .

[21]  Naresh K. Malhotra,et al.  Internet Users' Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC): The Construct, the Scale, and a Causal Model , 2004, Inf. Syst. Res..

[22]  Alfred Kobsa,et al.  Dimensionality of information disclosure behavior , 2013, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[23]  Sadok Ben Yahia,et al.  Context-aware recommender systems in mobile environment: On the road of future research , 2017, Inf. Syst..

[24]  Helen Nissenbaum,et al.  Privacy in Context - Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life , 2009 .

[25]  Lorrie Faith Cranor,et al.  Capturing location-privacy preferences: quantifying accuracy and user-burden tradeoffs , 2011, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[26]  Tara Matthews,et al.  Location disclosure to social relations: why, when, & what people want to share , 2005, CHI.

[27]  Lawrence R. Wheeless,et al.  Conceptualization and Measurement of Reported Self-Disclosure. , 1976 .

[28]  Pamela J. Wisniewski,et al.  A New Social Order: Mechanisms for Social Network Site Boundary Regulation , 2011, AMCIS.

[29]  Alessandro Acquisti,et al.  Information revelation and privacy in online social networks , 2005, WPES '05.

[30]  Jinyoung Min,et al.  Personal information concerns and provision in social network sites: Interplay between secure preservation and true presentation , 2016, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[31]  Pamela J. Wisniewski,et al.  Fighting for my space: coping mechanisms for sns boundary regulation , 2012, CHI.

[32]  Berker Agir,et al.  Adaptive information-sharing for privacy-aware mobile social networks , 2013, UbiComp.

[33]  Kristen LeFevre,et al.  Privacy wizards for social networking sites , 2010, WWW '10.

[34]  Zeynep Tufekci.  Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites , 2008 .

[35]  Daniel R. Horne,et al.  The Privacy Paradox: Personal Information Disclosure Intentions versus Behaviors , 2007 .

[36]  Heather Richter Lipford,et al.  Strategies and struggles with privacy in an online social networking community , 2008, BCS HCI.

[37]  Kim Sheehan,et al.  Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns , 2002, Inf. Soc..

[38]  Ido Guy,et al.  Do you want to know?: recommending strangers in the enterprise , 2011, CSCW.

[39]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Make new friends, but keep the old: recommending people on social networking sites , 2009, CHI.