Concepedia

Predicting Facebook Users’ Online Privacy Protection: Risk, Trust, Norm Focus Theory, and the Theory of Planned Behavior

Alexander K. Saeri, Claudette Ogilvie, Stephen T. La Macchia, Joanne R. Smith, Winnifred R. Louis

The Journal of Social Psychology · 2014 · 105 citations · 49 references

Open access

TL;DR

The study extends the theory of planned behavior with descriptive norms, risk, and trust to examine Facebook users’ online privacy protection intentions. A survey of 119 Facebook users measured attitudes, injunctive and descriptive norms, perceived control, risk, trust, and privacy intentions, with behavior assessed indirectly two weeks later. Results partially support TPB, confirm injunctive and descriptive norms are independent, and show risk predicts intentions beyond TPB, while trust has no unique effect on intentions or behavior.

Abstract

The present research adopts an extended theory of the planned behavior model that included descriptive norms, risk, and trust to investigate online privacy protection in Facebook users. Facebook users (N = 119) completed a questionnaire assessing their attitude, subjective injunctive norm, subjective descriptive norm, perceived behavioral control, implicit perceived risk, trust of other Facebook users, and intentions toward protecting their privacy online. Behavior was measured indirectly 2 weeks after the study. The data show partial support for the theory of planned behavior and strong support for the independence of subjective injunctive and descriptive norms. Risk also uniquely predicted intentions over and above the theory of planned behavior, but there were no unique effects of trust on intentions, nor of risk or trust on behavior. Implications are discussed.