Social network privacy dispositions: An objective measurement scale and a causal model

Abstract

The Information Systems literature has substantially advanced understanding of privacy in both offline contexts and online environments. Despite the rich understanding, existing studies predominately focused on elucidating privacy issues specific to individuals. The increasingly popular usage of mobile apps with social media integration has fundamentally challenged current understanding and conceptualization of information privacy. In particular, mobile apps allow information collection beyond individuals' personal scope (i.e., his/her personal information) and extend the scope of acquisition into individuals' online social networks (i.e., his/her list of friends on Facebook). To fill this gap in the literature, drawing on the Communication Privacy Management Theory, this proposal focuses on three unique dimensions of social network privacy dispositions, namely permeability, ownership, and linkage. Second, we propose to operationalize these three dimensions of social network privacy dispositions using a second-order reflective construct, and we plan to develop an objective measurement scale for it. Lastly, we plan to validate the construct using a nomological network.