Communication Privacy Management in the Digital Age - Effects of General and Situational Privacy Concerns

Internet users are increasingly concerned about their information privacy in a world with organizations that collect and combine personal information to enhance services and secret services that keep citizens under surveillance. Prior research has focused on how privacy concerns influence individuals' intentions to disclose information. However, scholars have recently challenged two assumptions. First, the sole reliance on willingness to disclose information has been questioned due to the observance of an intention-behavior gap. Second, some authors have distinguished between general and situation-specific information privacy concerns and call for more research on these concerns. Drawing from Communication Privacy Management Theory, we address both of these issues and develop a theoretical model that shows how general and situation-specific privacy concerns are raised, related, and impact information disclosure behavior. Moreover, we outline our methodology by describing how an experimental setting will be used to explore the influence of general and situation-specific privacy concerns.