The role of affect and cognition on online consumers' decision to disclose personal information to unfamiliar online vendors

a r t i c l e i n f o Based on the privacy calculus framework and the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) model, this study examines online information disclosure decision as a result of affective and cognitive reactions of online consumers over several stages, i.e. an initial stage where an overall impression is formed about an unfamiliar online vendor, and a subsequent information exchange stage where information necessary to complete the ecommerce transaction will be provided to the online vendor. We found that, initial emotions formed from an overall impression of a Web site act as initial hurdles to information disclosure. Once online consumers enter the information exchange stage, fairness-based levers further adjust privacy beliefs. Online consumers are facing serious threats to their information privacy. The ubiquitous connectivity of the wired and wireless network platform supporting e-commerce has led to an expansion in the sources of data and easier access to personal information. A number of reputable firms such as Google [35,36] and Facebook [60] have faced privacy-related backlashes in recent years. For instance, Amazon.com has been criticized for exercising price discrimination using personal information that they collected [16]. In a recent study analyzing the current state of Web privacy practices [33], it was found that reputable e-commerce websites like eBay, Amazon, and Paypal share their collected customer data with hundreds of their affiliated companies. As vast amounts of personal information is being exchanged, stored and shared, individual privacy is under public scrutiny. Recent studies have shown that information privacy is considered to be one of the major obstacles to the growth of e-commerce [34,57]. Most online consumers have refused to provide their personal information at one time or another and a large percentage of them have falsified personal information provided to online vendors [61]. It has been shown that more than half of the consumers (61%) were hesitant to disclose credit card information online [29]. Clearly, understanding factors influencing an online consumer's willingness to provide personal information is important to both online vendors and the growth of e-commerce. A large body of research has focused on consumers' general privacy concern [22,45,56–58,65], which is defined as an individual's general tendency to worry about information privacy [45]. General privacy concern is not specific to a particular context (e.g., a specific Web site or online company) and differs from person to person. Empirical studies examining general privacy concern have been inconsistent in terms …