Examining the Intention of Authorization via Apps: Personality Traits and Expanded Privacy Calculus Perspectives

By integrating the extended privacy calculus theory with the Big Five personality theory, this research proposes and validates a conceptual model in the context of mobile application (App) information authorization. It investigates the implications of each component of privacy costs, privacy advantages, and trust on users’ willingness to authorize their information, and explores how the five personality traits affect App users’ perceived benefits, privacy concern, and trust. Simultaneously, the links between prior negative experience and privacy concern as well as the final authorizing willingness were uncovered. We employed a questionnaire to collect 455 users’ data, and the partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The findings demonstrate that App users’ perceived benefits and trust have a positive impact on their privacy authorization intention, whereas privacy concerns negatively affect their disclosure willingness. Just as Extraversion and Agreeableness would make someone pay a heightened attention to the benefits, agreeable, neurotic, and conscientious users are more easily stimulated by privacy concern. Respectively, Agreeableness and Neuroticism affect users’ trust positively and negatively. Additionally, prior negative experience will trigger an individual’s privacy concern, which in turn hinders their willingness to authorize his/her information. All of the aforementioned can serve as a guide for App providers as they optimize the features of their products and services, implement the necessary privacy protections to alleviate users’ privacy concern, and boost users’ trust belief. More importantly, these results effectively demonstrate the significance of personal traits in the formation of users’ privacy perceptions.