Disclosing Personal Information to Social Networking Site Providers : The role of trust, risk and perceived benefits

Sammanfattning: This thesis is set to investigate the factors that affect the intention to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The purpose of this study is to identify factors and how these factors affect the behavioral intention to disclose personal information to SNS from a new angle of analysis, namely through a user-to-organizational approach. By examining this phenomenon in a new context, this study seeks to provide an understanding of this phenomenon in a new setting and test if previous research can be used to explain the stated behavioral intention. With this argumentation in mind, the thesis aims to contribute to existing theory in consumer behavior, social networking sites, privacy concerns and personal information disclosure. In order to do so this paper is built on a quantitative research approach where the main research strategy is based on the results of a questionnaire. Through the questionnaire, a proposed framework was tested in order to identify factors affecting peoples’ intentions to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The model was built upon the structure of privacy calculation theory, which has been proven to identify intentions to disclose personal information in online settings. The results show that the factors that significantly affect behavioral intentions are trusting beliefs and self-presentations. They are factors leading to personal information disclosure to SNS providers. Limitations of this study is that it suffers a sampling restrictions due to its sampling of only Swedish inhabitants. This paper is the first to develop and empirically test an integrated model of personal information disclosure to SNS, taking on a user-to-organizational approach to privacy. Since SNS are financially evaluated by number of active users of their SNS it is crucial to understand the factors that affect consumers’ intention to disclose their personal information. From the empirical findings, this study proved that trust and self-presentation determine the intentions to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The results shows a discrepancy of existing literature, explaining differences between user-to-user and user-to-organizational context, and thus broadening the context of personal disclosure in the SNS realm. Practitioners can, by using the insights, tailor their strategies in order to maximize the efforts of affecting potential users’ to disclose their personal information, which SNS providers are dependent upon.