One-Time Decision or Continual Adjustment? A Longitudinal Study of the Within-Person Privacy Calculus among Users and Non-Users of a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App
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引用次数: 1
Abstract
ABSTRACT Privacy behaviors are described to be situationally dynamic. While most privacy studies rely on cross-sectional analyses, it is important to investigate these dynamics within persons. In the present study, we will focus on the adoption of a COVID-19 contact tracing app as this was shown to be a privacy calculus-based decision and the pandemic situation unfolded as highly dynamical. The present longitudinal online panel study (N = 548) investigated users and non-users of this app at three points over a six-month period. Results support dynamical privacy calculus assumptions on the within-subject level: situational privacy concerns were negatively, and situationally perceived benefits and knowledge were positively associated with app adoption. Remarkably, a within-person interaction between concerns and benefits was found. Moreover, the trait need for privacy moderated the relation between perceived benefits and app adoption. Hence, privacy (calculus) decisions seem to be a dynamic and situational rather than a one-time decision.
期刊介绍:
Media Psychology is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to publishing theoretically-oriented empirical research that is at the intersection of psychology and media communication. These topics include media uses, processes, and effects. Such research is already well represented in mainstream journals in psychology and communication, but its publication is dispersed across many sources. Therefore, scholars working on common issues and problems in various disciplines often cannot fully utilize the contributions of kindred spirits in cognate disciplines.