Unauthorized Information Sharing Vs. Hacking: The Moderating Role of Privacy Concern on Trust Found and Lost

This study examines the moderating role of privacy concern (PC) on initial trust and the related trust loss associated with news pertaining to hacking of user information and unauthorized sharing of user information by a website. This study is among the first to study the moderating role of the level of privacy concern on the degree of attribution. The relationships are examined individually for ability, benevolence and integrity based trust. The findings suggest that the users were more punitive of the fact that the company willingly, unethically, and in an unauthorized fashion shared its users' information for its gain. The study unravels an interesting dual nature of privacy concern and trust. The findings suggest that initial trust leads to bigger integrity based trust drop for high PC people, however, trust propensity cushions the trust drop for low PC users across all three trust types i.e. ability, benevolence and integrity. This paper provides several theoretical and managerial implications.