Revisiting the Privacy Paradox on Social Media With an Extended Privacy Calculus Model: The Effect of Privacy Concerns, Privacy Self-Efficacy, and Social Capital on Privacy Management

Abstract

This study builds on the privacy calculus model to revisit the privacy paradox on social media. A two-wave panel data set from Hong Kong and a cross-sectional data set from the United States are used. This study extends the model by incorporating privacy self-efficacy as another privacy-related factor in addition to privacy concerns (i.e., costs) and examines how these factors interact with social capital (i.e., the expected benefit) in influencing different privacy management strategies, including limiting profile visibility, self-disclosure, and friending. This study proposed and found a two-step privacy management strategy in which privacy concerns and privacy self-efficacy prompt users to limit their profile visibility, which in turn enhances their self-disclosing and friending behaviors in both Hong Kong and the United States. Results from the moderated mediation analyses further demonstrate that social capital strengthens the positive–direct effect of privacy self-efficacy on self-disclosure in both places, and it can mitigate the direct effect of privacy concerns on restricting self-disclosure in Hong Kong (the conditional direct effects). Social capital also enhances the indirect effect of privacy self-efficacy on both self-disclosure and friending through limiting profile visibility in Hong Kong (the conditional indirect effects). Implications of the findings are discussed.