Research on Privacy Disclosure Behavior of Mobile App Users from Perspectives of Online Social Support and Gender Differences

Abstract

The provision of information and emotions is the core competitive edge for mobile apps to attract users to utilize their services and functionalities. Considering user demands and gender differences, it holds great significance for mobile apps to optimize personalized services by elucidating the formation mechanism of privacy disclosure behavior from the perspective of online social support (information and emotional). We adopt online social support theory and construct a model based on Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework to collect questionnaire data from 548 respondents for empirical analysis. The results showed that both online information support and online emotional support have direct or indirect positive effects on privacy disclosure behavior, with perceived justice and privacy concern mediating this effect. Perceived justice has a negative impact on privacy concern. Besides, females exhibit higher levels of privacy concern and lower levels of disclosure, and there are differences in the types of demand support between males and females in privacy decision-making.

Keywords:

• Mobile app
• privacy disclosure behavior
• user demands
• online social support
• gender difference
• SOR framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No.72161013 and 71761012).

Notes on contributors

Chengyi Le

Chengyi Le is a Professor in the School of Economics and Management at East China Jiaotong University. His main areas of research include User Behavior Research and Information Management.

Zhenhao Zhang

Zhenhao Zhang is from the School of Economics and Management at East China Jiaotong University. His research interests include User Behavior Research and Privacy Security.

Yan Liu

Yan Liu is from the School of Economics and Management at East China Jiaotong University. Her research interests include Human-Computer Interaction and User Behavior Research.