Concern for Privacy of Self and Others: Sharing Behavior, and Engagement

Privacy concern continues to grow as online presences become more prevalent through social network sites (SNSs). Significant research has studied the privacy concern construct as it pertains to privacy for information about self, however little research considers a privacy concern for information about others. We hypothesize relationships between both privacy concern for self and others and three different sharing behaviors, self-sharing, non-personal sharing, and others-sharing. We further hypothesize relationships between these sharing behaviors and engagement with the SNS. Building on previous literature, we contribute by expanding unique privacy concerns and relating these to separate sharing behaviors. Further, we believe this research in progress can help future practical understandings of privacy concerns as individuals and laws attempt to improve regulations. As a research in progress, we briefly outline our intentions on data collection through a survey method and potential impact of the results

Information Re-Sharing on Social Network Sites in the Age of Fake News

Aim/Purpose: In the light of the recent attention to the role of social media in the dissemination of fake news, it is important to understand the relationship between the characteristics of the social media content and re-sharing behavior. This study seeks to examine individual level antecedents of information re-sharing behavior including individual beliefs about the quality of information available on social network sites (SNSs), attitude towards SNS use and risk perceptions and attitudes. Methodology: Testing the research model by data collected through surveys that were adminis-tered to test the research model. Data was collected from undergraduate students in a public university in the US. Contribution: This study contributes to theory in Information Systems by addressing the issue of information quality in the context of information re-sharing on social media. This study has important practical implications for SNS users and providers alike. Ensuring that information available on SNS is of high quality is critical to maintaining a healthy user base. Findings: Results indicate that attitude toward using SNSs and intention to re-share infor-mation on SNSs is influenced by perceived information quality (enjoyment, rele-vance, and reliability). Also, risk-taking propensity and enjoyment influence the intention to re-share information on SNSs in a positive direction. Future Research: In the dynamic context of SNSs, the role played by quality of information is changing. Understanding changes in quality of information by conducting longitudinal studies and experiments and including the role of habits is necessary

Factors Influencing Emotional Attachment to Social Network Apps

Nowadays, the average time people spend on their mobile apps is increasing. However, the life cycle of a new mobile app could be very short. For developers, it is important to have a profound impact on users during the first experience. Previous work has been done to show antecedents of app usage and the role of privacy concern on self-disclosure. However, there is a gap in the literature about the emotional attachment to social networking apps (SNAs). We propose a research model to investigate privacy concern and engagement as two antecedents of emotional attachment to an SNA. In addition, we examine the importance of perceived anonymity and self-disclosure on privacy concerns and engagement with the SNA. We will test the research model with the survey method and actual usage data captured from users’ log files. Finally, we will discuss expected contributions of this research and future directions

Do Mobile App Providers Try Enough to Protect Users’ Privacy? – a Content Analysis of Mobile App Privacy Policies

Privacy policies are widely used to draw clear image of risks to users’ personal information in different contexts such as mobile apps. Nonetheless, many believe privacy policies are ineffective tools to notify and aware users about possible risks to information privacy merely because most users have a very low tendency to go through privacy policies to read and comprehend them. Due to intimacy of mobile apps, much of personal information disclosed to them are at risk. Specially, when mobile app users share sensitive personal information to apps chance of privacy violation and consequent risks are higher. It is not only important to understand how mobile developers practically implement a contract to protect users’ privacy based on users’ preferences but also crucial to examine the role of sensitivity of information on developers’ emphasis on different aspects of privacy. This research focuses on two aspects to understand the circumstance users experience when privacy policies are presented: efforts users have to make to read and understand privacy policies in terms of readability and length of statements, and developers’ emphasis on aspects of information privacy with respect to sensitivity of information. To elucidate easiness of reading privacy policy statements, readability and length are calculated. Through the lens of framing concept of prospect theory, this study investigates the information sensitivity level effect on developers’ emphasis on privacy dimensions. Three mobile app categories deal with different levels of sensitive data are health, navigation, and game apps. To differentiate between emphasis on different privacy dimensions when information sensitivity differs, a text mining method is developed in R to analyze the weights of four key privacy dimensions (collection, secondary use, improper access, and error). We downloaded 90 unique mobile app privacy policies. Readability calculations reveal that users should have a minimum of 12 years of secondary education to easily understand privacy policies. The average length of privacy policies is at least 1900 words, which hinders a thorough reading. ANOVA results show a significant difference between secondary uses of information in app privacy policies dealing with higher sensitive data. In addition, the findings demonstrate collection is more emphasized in health than game app privacy policies but do not find any significant difference between improper access dimensions. This study has made two key contributions. First, by building upon the framing concept of prospect theory, this research provides an effective framework to understand the organizational perspective of privacy concerns. Second, the results demonstrate the information sensitivity level is important for measuring privacy concerns

False Rumor (Fake) and Truth News Spread During A Social Crisis

During a social crisis, the truthfulness of information becomes very important, particularly in determining if the information will spark extreme social engagement. We test a research model to examine major determinants of message spread during the 2016 Charlotte, North Carolina protests which occurred after false online rumors spread related to the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. We hypothesize relationships between message spread (retweets) and extremity, negative emotions (sadness and fear), and social ties (reciprocal reply and location proximity), and Twitter experience. Using Poisson regression, we evaluate and compare two separate models (rumor and truth). Results of the analysis indicate that rumors and truths spread differently. More extreme messages spread less if they are truths, and fear does not relate to the spread of rumors. The results of the study provide theoretical and practical insights into the current research in the areas of information diffusion and social engagement

Antecedents of Online Customers Reviews’ Helpfulness: A Support Vector Machine Approach

Online customer reviews (OCRs) have become an important part of online customers’ decision making and People use online reviews to make decision to buy or not to buy products and services. This study aims to answer two research questions: (1) what are the antecedents of helpfulness of online reviews based on their contents? (2) How do content-based cues on OCRs influence their helpfulness? We posit a research model to study the effect of peripheral and central cues in OCRs on online review helpfulness. Online review web pages will be collected from Amazon website using a web crawler. This article will be one of the first studies that investigate OCRs helpfulness based on the central cues in the text of the review. In addition, this research will be the first study that applied the support vector machine as a machine learning method to analyze the text of OCRs

Spatiotemporal Patterns and Socioeconomic Dimensions of Shared Accommodations: The Case of AIRBNB in Los Angeles, California

In recent years, disruptive innovation by peer-to-peer platforms in a variety of industries, notably transportation and hospitality have altered the way individuals consume everyday essential services. With growth in sharing economy platforms such as Uber for ridesharing and Airbnb for short-term accommodations, interest in examining spatiotemporal patterns of participation in the sharing economy by suppliers and consumers is increasing. This research is motivated by key questions: who are the sharing economy workers, where are they located, and does their location influence their participation in the sharing economy? This paper is the first systematic effort to analyze spatiotemporal patterns of participation by hosts in the shared accommodation-based economy. Using three different kinds of shared accommodations listed in a 3-year period in the popular short-term accommodation platform, Airbnb, we examine spatiotemporal dimensions of host participation in a major U.S. market, Los Angeles CA. The paper also develops a conceptual model by positing associations of demographic, socioeconomic, occupational, and social capital attributes of hosts, along with their attitudes toward trust and greener consumption with hosts’ participation in a shared accommodation market. Results confirm host participation to be influenced by young dependency ratio, the potential of supplemental income, as well as the sustainability potential of collaborative consumption, along with finance, insurance, and real estate occupation, but not so much by trust for our overall study area. These results add new insights to limited prior knowledge about the sharing economy worker and have policy implications

Continued Usage and Location Disclosure of Location-Based Applications: A Necessity for Location Intelligence

Location-based applications (LBA) have been widely accepted and used for different purposes ranging from navigation to dating or gaming. Most LBAs ask users to provide access to location data for more efficient and personalized location-based services. Location intelligence as an emerging area of business intelligence relies heavily on disclosing location information by users. This research builds a continuance usage and location disclosure model from the expectation-confirmation perspective. The effect of benefit expectations on usefulness and satisfaction is hypothesized. In addition, the positive effect of usefulness on satisfaction and continuance intention is postulated. After collecting survey data from main LBA users, the results of the analysis support the proposed model. Findings contribute to the current literature in business intelligence by focusing on location disclosure behavior in the context of LBAs and the necessity of this type of information for location intelligence

A Recommender System for Online Consumer Reviews

Online consumer reviews have helped consumers to increase their knowledge about different products/services. While most previous studies try to provide general models that predict performance of online reviews, this study notes that different people look for different types of reviews. Hence, there is a need for developing a system that that is able to sort reviews differently for each user based on the ratings they previously assigned to other reviews. Using a design science approach, we address the above need by developing a recommender system that is able to predict the perceptions of each user regarding helpfulness of a specific review. In addition to addressing the sorting problem, this study also develops models that extract objective information from the text of online reviews including utilitarian cues, hedonic cues, product quality, service quality, price, and product comparison. Each of these characteristics may also be used for sorting and filtering online reviews

Information Re-Sharing on Social Network Sites in the Age of Fake News

Aim/Purpose: In the light of the recent attention to the role of social media in the dissemination of fake news, it is important to understand the relationship between the characteristics of the social media content and re-sharing behavior. This study seeks to examine individual level antecedents of information re-sharing behavior including individual beliefs about the quality of information available on social network sites (SNSs), attitude towards SNS use and risk perceptions and attitudes. Methodology: Testing the research model by data collected through surveys that were adminis-tered to test the research model. Data was collected from undergraduate students in a public university in the US. Contribution: This study contributes to theory in Information Systems by addressing the issue of information quality in the context of information re-sharing on social media. This study has important practical implications for SNS users and providers alike. Ensuring that information available on SNS is of high quality is critical to maintaining a healthy user base. Findings: Results indicate that attitude toward using SNSs and intention to re-share infor-mation on SNSs is influenced by perceived information quality (enjoyment, rele-vance, and reliability). Also, risk-taking propensity and enjoyment influence the intention to re-share information on SNSs in a positive direction. Future Research: In the dynamic context of SNSs, the role played by quality of information is changing. Understanding changes in quality of information by conducting longitudinal studies and experiments and including the role of habits is necessary