When and Why Consumers Respond to Online Privacy Violations

Abstract

As consumer privacy concerns become paramount, it is increasingly critical to understand what constitutes a privacy violation and how consumers respond. Using a multi-method approach, this research shows that consumers perceive three privacy violation types with increasing levels of severity, explaining when and why consumers exhibit seemingly paradoxical responses to different violation types. Our theorizing and findings suggest that resource control is the predominant mechanism driving privacy behavior, and that situation controllability (operationalized as level of variability of privacy practices within the industry) may moderate its effects. ***Disclosure: An earlier version of this work was submitted and accepted to HICSS last year but was later withdrawn as the authors were unable to attend the conference due to extenuating circumstances. Thanks to the reviews provided by the conference committee last year, we were able to revise and update new analyses and studies in our empirical package in this submission.