Impact of trust, security and privacy concerns in social networking: An exploratory study to understand the pattern of information revelation in Facebook

In the era of Internet technologies, social networking websites has witnessed thriving popularity. Computer mediated communication has changed the rules of social interaction and communication. Most social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. facilitates user's with the features like online interaction, sharing of information and developing new relationships etc. Online interaction and sharing of personal information in social networking sites has raised new privacy concerns. So, it requires an exploratory insight into user's behavioural intention to share information. This research aims to develop a research model, with security and privacy concerns conceptualized as an antecedent of trust in social networking site and moderator of information sharing. The study aims to understand the impact of security, trust and privacy concerns on the willingness of sharing information in social networking sites. Using an online questionnaire, empirical data were collected from 250 Facebook user's of different age group over the time period of 4 months. Reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structure equation modelling is used to validate the proposed research framework. This empirical study, based on an established theoretical foundation, will help the research community to gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of privacy concern in the context of Facebook. Practical implications: - The paper increases the understanding of user's willingness to reveal information on social networking site on their level of privacy, security and trust. The proposed ideas and discussion is equally applicable to social networking site operators with useful strategies for enhancing user's acceptance. Findings:-The privacy concerns of research respondents were found statistically significant and suggest that privacy concerns like security, trust has a positive effect on information sharing.

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