Past the Privacy Paradox: The Importance of Privacy Changes as a Function of Control and Complexity

The privacy paradox is often characterized as a risk-benefit trade-off. Risks like identity theft, invasions of privacy, and online harassment compete with benefits like social need fulfillment, impression management, and self-esteem validation. Individuals’ willingness to disclose personal information is thought to vary as a function of this trade-off. Three studies provide initial evidence of an alternative explanation in which one’s subjective importance of privacy itself varies as a function of who is in control of managing privacy and the extent to which managing privacy is perceived to be easy or difficult. When privacy is difficult to manage, individuals perceive privacy to be more important when they control privacy management but less important when a social network/company controls privacy management. This changing importance predicts an individual’s intentions to disclose private information and moderates established effects that risk-benefit trade-off tolerance and trust in a company’s expertise (but not benevolence) have on disclosure.