Motivational factors in privacy protection behaviour model for social networking sites

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have exponentially grown over the past decade. They offer a variety of tools that facilitates communication and information sharing. Despite its conveniences, uncontrolled sharing can lead to the loss and exploitation of privacy. Besides, privacy protection behaviour to protect oneself from SNS risks and threats must be emphasizes because more factor may be contribute to privacy protection behaviour, but issues of related to motivational factors of privacy protection behaviour are as of yet, unexplored. This study focuses on the motivational factors of privacy protection behaviour.This study utilised a quantitative research approach through questionnaires. The population of the study comprised of third-year undergraduates from Malaysian public universities. The minimum sample size was determined to be 355 although 497 quesionnaires were distributed. The respondents were selected based on proportional stratified sampling technique. The research instrument was adapted from previous studies, divided into three sections, and validated by a panel of experts from the field of information technology. The data was analysed using SPSS version 22.0 and AMOS version 20.0. The results reveal a moderate level of privacy protection behaviour. The perceived vulnerability was found to be the most salient factor in motivating the adoption of privacy protection behaviour with the mediation of information privacy concern, followed by perceived severity, anonymity of self and others, intrusiveness, self-efficacy and response efficacy. Rewards were also found to be mediated by information privacy concern towards privacy protection behaviour although in a negative fashion. The results attained from the analysis produced a model that predicts the motivational factors of privacy protection behaviour among undergraduates. The model was confirmed to account for 61% of the variance (adjusted R2) in privacy protection behaviour. Expert validation was conducted to better understand the survey results and to obtain validation from experts. Several implications were also drawn from the results of the study. The Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) was tested and expanded upon by the integration of the Hyperpersonal Communication theory (HCT). Through this amalgamation as one mediator, the proposed predictive model is definitive and provides a foundation to guide future research in related fields of study