This article describes a unified approach to privacy decision research that
describes the cognitive processes involved in users’ “privacy calculus” in terms of system-related
perceptions and experiences that act as mediating factors to information disclosure. The approach is
applied in an online experiment with 493 participants using a mock-up of a context-aware recommender
system. Analyzing the results with a structural linear model, we demonstrate that personal privacy
concerns and disclosure justification messages affect the perception of and experience with a system,
which in turn drive information disclosure decisions. Overall, disclosure justification messages do not
increase disclosure. Although they are perceived to be valuable, they decrease users’ trust and satisfaction.
Another result is that manipulating the order of the requests increases the disclosure of items requested
early but decreases the disclosure of items requested later.
Another problem is that users’ information disclosure decisions are highly
dependent on the context [Lederer et al. 2003; Li et al. 2010; Nissenbaum 2010; John
et al. 2011]. Researchers have looked at various techniques to assist or influence
users in such decisions, such as reordering the disclosure requests to increase
disclosure [Acquisti et al. 2011], providing justifications for disclosing (or not
disclosing) certain information [Kobsa and Teltzrow 2005; Besmer et al. 2010; Patil
et al. 2011; Acquisti et al. 2011], or displaying privacy seals or statements [Rifon et
al. 2005; Hui et al. 2007; Egelman et al. 2009; Xu et al. 2009]. While these studies
yielded interesting and occasionally even counterintuitive results, those results are
mostly quite isolated. For instance, some research focuses on increasing disclosure
behavior, but disregards users’ perception of the system and their satisfaction with
the experience of using it (see section 2.1). Others study users’ general privacy
concerns, but disregard their impact on disclosure behavior (see section 2.2).
Research relevant to privacy-related decision-making is scattered across several
disparate thrusts, including research on increasing information disclosure, research
on user perception and satisfaction (also called ‘user experience’), and research on
privacy concerns as personal traits.
To make relevant and robust contributions, research on users’ reluctance to
disclose personal data to context-based recommender systems should forge the
divergent contributions into a unified approach. By incorporating system-related
perceptions and experiences as mediators to information disclosure behavior, such an
approach can provide insights into the cognitive processes involved in users’ privacy
calculus, and explain how suggested system improvements as well as personal
privacy concerns impact information disclosure decisions. This paper develops such
an encompassing approach (section 2) and applies it to the analysis of an online user
experiment with a mockup of a mobile app recommender system (section 3). Section 4
reflects on the results of this experiment and integrates them with qualitative
findings from an interview study. Section 5 finally provides conclusions and
suggestions for future research.