Investigating Privacy and Information Disclosure Behavior in Social Electronic Commerce

Social e-commerce has steadily emerged as a current trend for an enormous amount of Internet users. Despite the popularity and prevalence of social e-commerce, many users hesitate to disclose their information due to privacy concerns. This resistance from users impedes the development of social e-commerce enterprises. In order to help enterprises collect more user information and establish better development strategies, this research builds on the Privacy Antecedent-Privacy Concern-Outcomes (APCO) model and the theory of privacy calculus. This research investigates how the privacy antecedents of hot topic interactivity and group buying experience influence users' privacy concerns and perceived benefits as well as how to further influence users' information disclosure behavior. The results from 406 questionnaire responses indicate that hot topic interactivity and group buying experience have significant negative impacts on privacy concerns and significant positive impacts on perceived benefits. Privacy concerns negatively influence the behavior of information disclosure while perceived benefits positively influence the behavior of information disclosure. Based on these results, social e-commerce enterprises should promote users' behaviors of hot topic interactivity and group buying to stimulate users' information disclosure behavior.