Too Tired and in Too Good of a Mood to Worry About Privacy: Explaining the Privacy Paradox Through the Lens of Effort Level in Information Processing

• Published in: Information systems research 2023-12, Vol.34 (4), p.1415-1436
• Main Authors: Alashoor, Tawfiq, Keil, Mark, Smith, H. Jeff, McConnell, Allen R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: cognitive depletion; Consumer behavior; Consumers; Data integrity; Disclosure; disclosure behaviors; elaboration likelihood model; enhanced APCO; Experiments; Information processing; mood; Paradoxes; Personal information; Privacy; privacy concerns; privacy paradox; Psychological factors
• ISSN: 1047-7047; 1526-5536
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.2022.1182

Policy-oriented Abstract Data privacy is one of the most pressing issues today. The world is thirsty for novel, effective, and efficient policies to strike an appropriate balance between protecting individuals’ privacy and creating economic value from their personal information. Whereas governmental efforts, such as the enaction of General Data Protection Regulation, California Consumer Privacy Act, and other privacy regulations, have been pushing boundaries to strike this balance, the effects of these types of initiatives on individuals’ privacy awareness and behavior are uncertain, likely to be nuanced, and will take time to sort out. In this paper, we explain the privacy paradox, a phenomenon with important implications that apply to policymakers, industry professionals, and individuals. The privacy paradox refers to a mismatch between individuals’ stated privacy concerns and their actual disclosure behaviors. In three behavioral experiments, we show how the paradox is revealed when individuals are cognitively tired especially when they are in a good mood. These findings do not indicate that individuals do not care about privacy because they do when they are not cognitively tired especially when they are in a bad mood. By explaining the privacy paradox, we inform existing and future privacy policies to strike that balance we all strive for. The confluence of digital transactions, growing cybersecurity threats, and the internet of the future (e.g., web 3.0 and the metaverse) have made information privacy increasingly important to consumers and companies that rely on consumers willingly sharing their personal information. Although information privacy has been of interest to researchers for decades and much has been learned, one thing that perplexes scholars is the privacy paradox, which we define as a mismatch between stated privacy concerns and actual disclosure behaviors. In this paper, we shed light on this phenomenon and show that low-effort information processing triggered by cognitive depletion (Experiment 1), positive mood (Experiment 2), or both (Experiment 3) significantly attenuates the association between stated privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors. These findings do not indicate that individuals do not care about privacy because we find consistent evidence in the three experiments for a significant negative association between stated privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors when individuals have sufficient cognitive capacity (Experiment