Understanding the Impact of Default Privacy Settings on Self-Disclosure in Social Network Services

Restrictive default privacy settings might threaten the business model and functionality of social network services (SNS). As a first step in understanding the impact of default privacy settings on selfdisclosure in SNS this paper proposes a conceptual model to reflect the decision-making and dimensions of self-disclosure in SNS. The conceptual model depicts aspects of benefits, costs and trust as impacting on five dimensions of self-disclosure. Thereafter, an instrument measuring the impact of default privacy settings on the Facebook SNS was developed. An item-sorting task, comprising three rounds, was performed to ensure the validity of the constructs used in the measurement instrument. The instrument comprises a 53-item questionnaire based on 16 constructs.