Purpose

Many internet users exhibit signs of privacy helplessness and entirely give up online privacy management. However, we know little about what privacy helplessness is, when users are likely to experience it and its implications for privacy behavior. The objectives of this study were twofold: (a) the conceptual explication of privacy helplessness as a novel construct in privacy research and (b) the development of a theoretical model that specifies the antecedents and consequences of privacy helplessness.

Design/methodology/approach

A research model of privacy helplessness that contains three subcomponents of privacy helplessness, five antecedents and one outcome was developed. The model was empirically examined based on survey data collected from 589 Facebook users in the USA.

Findings

The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that privacy helplessness is adequately assessed by a three-factor model with affective, cognitive and motivational components. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that these three aspects of privacy helplessness are uniquely predicted by five theoretical factors: (a) prior experience of privacy risks, (b) personal mastery, (c) perceived costs of adaptive privacy actions, (d) perceived rewards of privacy inactions and (e) perceived vulnerability. Furthermore, it was found that helplessness as motivational deficits (and cognitive helplessness via this) impedes adaptive privacy actions, while cognitive helplessness promotes adaptive privacy actions when they do not result in motivational deficits.

Originality/value

This study pioneers investigation in understanding key constituents, attributes and processes underlying privacy helplessness. First, the present study developed the first theory-derived, successively validated measurement model of privacy helplessness. Second, this research proposed a theoretical model of privacy helplessness, specifying antecedents and consequences of privacy helplessness.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体上的隐私无助：其构成、前因和后果

目的

许多互联网用户表现出隐私无助的迹象，完全放弃了在线隐私管理。然而，我们对什么是隐私无助、用户何时可能体验到它以及它对隐私行为的影响知之甚少。本研究的目标是双重的：（a）隐私无助的概念解释作为隐私研究中的一种新结构，以及（b）开发一个理论模型，指定隐私无助的前因和后果。

设计/方法/方法

建立了包含隐私无助三个子成分、五个前因和一个结果的隐私无助研究模型。该模型基于从美国 589 名 Facebook 用户收集的调查数据进行了实证检验。

发现

探索性和验证性因素分析的结果表明，隐私无助通过具有情感、认知和动机成分的三因素模型得到充分评估。结构方程模型的结果表明，隐私无助的这三个方面是由五个理论因素唯一预测的：（a）隐私风险的先前经验，（b）个人掌握，（c）自适应隐私行动的感知成本，（d）隐私不作为的感知回报和 (e) 感知脆弱性。此外，研究发现，作为动机缺陷的无助（以及由此产生的认知无助）会阻碍适应性隐私行为，而认知无助会在不导致动机缺陷的情况下促进适应性隐私行为。

原创性/价值

这项研究开创了调查了解隐私无助的关键成分、属性和过程的先河。首先，本研究开发了第一个理论衍生的、连续验证的隐私无助测量模型。其次，本研究提出了隐私无助的理论模型，明确了隐私无助的前因和后果。