Privacy Tradeoff and Social Application Usage

Privacy trade off is important to individuals´ usage of social applications. Although previous studies have enriched understanding on the impact of privacy trade off, rarely have researchers examined privacy trade off beyond the online commercial contexts. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining the effects of privacy risk and image enhancement on social application usage. To develop the research model, we drew on the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework to integrate the privacy literature and multidimensional development theory to explain how aspects of social applications influence usage intention through privacy risk and image enhancement. The research model was tested on survey data gathered from 217 social application users. We found that exposure sensitivity, network scope, and transparency of self affects privacy risk and image enhancement. Additionally, privacy risk and image enhancement were found to be important in shaping usage of social applications.