Research On The Influence Of Threat Appraisal On Privacy Protection Behavior Intention

With the rapid development of big data technology and AI,privacy leakage has been a common problem for a long time,which is also the source of frequent information harassment and privacy anxiety for most Internet users.In the era of big data with increasingly fierce competitions,companies acquire and analyze a large volume of user data for precision target marketing in order to carry out business activities,causing serious privacy invasions to users.In the face of privacy threats such as improper collection and use of personal information by service providers,users would resist passively,such as providing false information or leaving the website,which hinders the rapid,healthy and sustainable development of the company.Therefore,investigating the factors and influence mechanism of users’ intention to take negative privacy protection behavior is helpful for enterprises to better understand users’ privacy protection behaviors,and maintain advantages in the competition.This paper investigated the three key factors that affect the privacy protection behavior intention:self-efficacy,emotions and individual context.(1)Based on the protection motivation theory,this paper clarifies the appraisal of users’ ability to deal with threats in different information sensitivity contexts.(2)Taking the "Cognition-AffectConation Pattern" paradigm as the research framework,focusing on the emotional feedback under threat perception,and taking users’ information privacy anxiety as the mediating variable,this paper constructed a mechanism model of the impact of perceived threats on users’ privacy protection behavior intention.(3)Using prospect theory,from the perspective of e-commerce and finance,this paper explored the moderating effect of context on the whole model.Based on the research objectives,using SPSS25.0 and SmartPLS2.0 to conduct an empirical analysis with 200 valid data collected from ecommerce and 183 valid data collected from financial through the method of scenariobased experiment to test the proposed research hypothesis.The research results showed that compared with financial context,the positive relationship between perceived vulnerability and perceived threat,the positive relationship between information privacy anxiety and privacy protection behavior intention were more significant.The positive relationship from perceived severity to perceived threat,from perceived threat to privacy protection behavior intention,from perceived threat to information privacy anxiety were supported,but there were no contextual differences.The mediating effect of information privacy anxiety was supported in both contexts;the moderating effect of self-efficacy was only supported in the e-commerce context,showing significant contextual dependence.The research conclusions reveal that the perceived threat is through the user’s anxiety emotion on privacy protection intention,and at the same time comprehensively analyzes the mechanism of context influencing the user’s privacy protection behavior,and clarifies the constraint of the moderating role of self-efficacy in context.It provides a reference for scholars to systematically and deeply investigate users’ privacy protection behaviors in the future.For companies,the conclusions provide a theoretical basis for companies to formulate differentiated management strategies based on the characteristics of industries,and also offers some countermeasures and suggestions for enterprises to alleviate users’negative protection strategies and promote their true information disclosure.