Privacy, trust and control: Which relationships with online self-disclosure?

A number of studies have examined the relationship between privacy concerns, perceived control over information, trust and online self-disclosure, highlighting different points of view to understand this connection. This paper intends to compare these different models of explanation for self-disclosure behaviors in online social networks. Three different hypotheses are verified, using mediation and moderation analyses. The results allow underling the effect of the interaction between privacy concerns and trust on online self-disclosure, along with the absence of a direct influence of privacy concerns on disclosure itself. The results suggest practical implications for online social network providers, most of all with regard to privacy policies in online environments.

• Moderating effect of trust and privacy on online self-disclosure is verified. • Increasing trust is a necessary requirement to obtain online self-disclosure. • Privacy concern must to be low to obtain higher online self-disclosure. • Privacy policy are the most important chance to obtain online self-disclosure.