Leveraging Communication Tools to Reduce Consumers’ Privacy Concern in the On-demand Services: An Extended S-O-R Model of Perceived Control and Structural Assurance

Abstract

To use the on-demand services, consumers need to disclose themselves to some extent, which inevitably raises their privacy concerns. Different from previous literature exploring privacy assurance mechanisms, we employ the stimulus– organism–response framework to investigate how communication tools (environmental stimuli) influence consumers’ perceived control, structural assurance, as well as their service platform- and provider-related privacy concerns (organisms), which subsequently impact new consumers’ intention and regular consumers’ continuance intention to use the on-demand services (behavior responses). The models will be tested based on survey data collected from on-demand service consumers. The potential theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.