How Values Shape Concerns about Privacy for Self and Others

In this globally connected world, maintaining information privacy has become an issue to both individuals and societies. People from different cultural backgrounds not only perceive the importance of privacy differently but also may differ in terms of how they assess the sensitivity of private information, which might consequently affect their disclosure behaviors. Studying privacy concerns through cultural-values has received some attention but several gaps exist that call for further investigations. In this research-in-progress, we extend this research area by adopting Schwartz’s theory to study the critical roles that personal and social values play in shaping concerns about privacy. Specifically, we plan to examine the impact of values on concerns about privacy for both self and others, and how these concerns influence self-disclosure behaviors. We aim to test our research model in different cultures (U.S., Europe, and Asia) while accounting for different contexts (social networks, online retail websites, and health websites).