User’s self-anticipated satisfaction with the system is strongly impacted by their trust
in the company, the perceived value of disclosure help, and the perceived privacy threats
entailed by the disclosure. In the experiment, these three factors are the main subjective
determinants of satisfaction with the system. Moreover, part of the effect of
perceived value of disclosure help and perceived privacy threat is mediated by participants’
trust in the company, indicating that users’ evaluation of the system can have
a lasting effect on the reputation of the company.
In the interview study, 15 out of 17 participants also mentioned the reputation of or
trust in the company as a reason to disclose information or rather not. This result is in
line with a prior study by Teo et al. [2004]. Most of our participants were able to recall
a recent privacy scandal, and had lowered their evaluation of the involved company as
a result.
Interview participants also mentioned privacy threat as a determinant of their disclosure
decisions. Privacy threats were mentioned in a positive as well as negative
sense: 14 participants said they would disclose something because it did not pose a
privacy threat; 13 participants said they would not disclose something because it did
pose a threat. For 9 participants, privacy concerns occasionally trumped their initial
sense of the usefulness of the information; they would deem disclosing the information
“not worth the risk”. Typical threats mentioned were unwanted advertisements
(mentioned 11 times), the company selling their information (mentioned 12 times) and
security concerns or other unintended breaches of confidentiality (mentioned by all 17
participants).