Exploring the Impact of Restrictive Default Privacy Settings on the Privacy Calculus on Social Network sites

Research about self-disclosure on social network sites (SNS) is based on the assumption that all entered personal information is publicly available by default. Literature lacks empirical insights on how restrictive default privacy settings influence the privacy calculus and the self-disclosure on SNS. To gain empirical insight we analyzed how the perception of users regarding the benefits and privacy costs of self-disclosure on SNS changes by making users aware of restrictive default privacy settings. The results of our exploratory study using Facebook show that making users aware of restrictive default privacy settings significantly changes the perceived benefit of relationship maintenance and the perceived privacy costs of privacy concerns and the likelihood of a privacy violation.