Proposing a Hybrid Model that Reconciles Rationality and Nonrationality in Information Privacy Decision Making

Abstract

The growing access to private information has been amplifying concerns of privacy compromise. Although concerned about privacy, people still give up their personal information to online services too easily, thus called ‘privacy paradox.’ Privacy Calculus Theory (PCT) has been dominant to explain the contradictory behaviors. It, however, has been subject to criticism as it relies on unrealistic rationality assumptions of decision making and there have been growing calls to embrace nonrational theories and their elements. We introduce a hybrid model that explains privacy paradox through three antecedents— cognitive bias, affect and need—drawn from the nonrational viewpoints of behavioral economics, psychology, and biology. The proposed model is significant in privacy research as it proposes a new theory intended to harmoniously complement (rather than contradict) the PCT in explaining the “privacy paradox” of online service users.