Title: Examining profile disclosure on online social networks: an affective, behavioural, and cognitive perspective

Authors: Tziporah Stern; David Salb

Addresses: Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York (CUNY), 2001 Oriental Blvd., Brooklyn, NY 11235, USA ' Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York (CUNY), 2001 Oriental Blvd., Brooklyn, NY 11235, USA

Abstract: The magnitude of information shared on online social networks (OSN), such as Facebook, and their exponential growth brings to light the importance of understanding individual's profile disclosure. Encouraging disclosure is crucial for OSN to succeed as a business model, i.e., by using OSN as an advertising platform. A model was built making use of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) augmented by the ABC model of attitude, to investigate the affective, behavioural, and cognitive antecedents to attitude. To validate the model a survey was conducted, and the results were analysed with SmartPLS. Privacy risk, benefits, OSN trust, interpersonal trust, and OSN use were all found to significantly impact attitude, while attitude, social influence, and control all significantly impact profile disclosure. This research successfully applies TPB, and shows the value of including affective, behaviour, and cognitive antecedents in the OSN context. It also uniquely operationalises benefits, as well as, trust.

Keywords: ABC model of attitude; Facebook; information privacy; online social networks; trust; profile disclosure; theory of planned behaviour; TPB; profile disclosure; affective antecedents; behavioural antecedents; cognitive antecedents; user profiles.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2015.069106

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2015 Vol.12 No.2, pp.162 - 184

Received: 27 Mar 2014
Accepted: 06 Mar 2015
Published online: 27 Apr 2015 *

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