Information privacy in e-service: Effect of organizational privacy assurances on individual privacy concerns, perceptions, trust and self-disclosure behavior

The increasing use of the Internet for service delivery has paralleled an increase of e-service users' privacy concerns as technology offers ample opportunities for organizations to store, process, and exploit personal data. This may reduce individuals' perceived ability to control their personal information and increase their perceived privacy risk. A systematic understanding of individuals' privacy concerns is important as negative user perceptions are a challenge to service providers' reputation and may hamper service delivery processes as they influence users' trust and willingness to disclose personal information. This study develops and validates a model that examines the effect of organizational privacy assurances on individual privacy concerns, privacy control and risk perceptions, trust beliefs and non-self-disclosure behavior. Drawing on a survey to 547 users of different types of e-services – e-government, e-commerce and social networking – in Rwanda, and working within the framework of exploratory analysis, this study uses partial least square-structural equation modeling to validate the overall model and the proposed hypotheses. The findings show that perceptions of privacy risks and privacy control are antecedents of e-service users' privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behavior. They further show that the perceived effectiveness of privacy policy and perceived effectiveness of self-regulations influence both perceptions of privacy risks and control and their consequences; users' privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behavior. The hypotheses are supported differently across the three types of e-services, which means that privacy is specific to context and situation. The study shows that the effect of privacy assurances on trust is different in e-government services than in other services which suggest that trust in e-government may be more complex and different in nature than in other contexts. The findings serve to enhance a theoretical understanding of organizational privacy assurances and individual privacy concerns, trust and self-disclosure behavior. They also have implications for e-service providers and users as well as for regulatory bodies and e-services designers.