Effect of penitence on social media trust and privacy concerns: The case of Facebook

Abuse of information entrusted to organizations can result in a variety of privacy violations and trust concerns for consumers. In the event of violations, a social media brand or organization renders an apology – a form of social account – to alleviate users’ concerns and maintain user membership and engagement with the platform. To explore the link between apology offered by a social media brand or organization and the users’ trust dynamics in the brand’s services, we study how organizational integrity can contribute to reducing individuals’ privacy concerns whiles increasing or repairing their trust. Drawing on organizational behavioral integrity literature, our proposed research model suggests that the persuasiveness of an apology following a data breach affects users’ trust or spillover trust through their perceptions of the degree of alignment between the words in the apology and the actions of the violating entity. Based on a survey of Facebook users, our findings show that persuasiveness of an apology has a significant impact on users’ perceptions of the alignment between the social media brand’s (i.e. Facebook) words and subsequent actions. These perceptions impact social media brand trust (i.e. users’ trust in Facebook and allied services such as Instagram). We also find that, post data breach incidence, while integrity of the social media organization partially mediates the relationship between persuasive apology and users’ trust, it fully mediates the relationship between the persuasive apology and the privacy concerns expressed by the users. However, users’ privacy concerns do not contribute much to the repair of trust needed to maintain their membership.