Privacy Calculus Analyzed with RSA: Case of VKontakte Users in Russia

Social networking sites (SNS) developed into a huge part of everyday life of a modern person. However, there is a conflict between the desire to establish and maintain social connections, and to protect one’s privacy. On SNSs users inevitably need to disclose personal information to be in contact with their online friends while the ability to control privacy seems to be limited. The privacy calculus approach describes how people protect privacy online. It is based on risk and benefits analysis, so users weigh the expected negative consequences of sharing personal information with the expected benefits of such behavior. This study is aimed at investigating the complex relationship between costs and benefits in relation to self-withdrawal and self-disclosure in the context of privacy calculus approach. It was intended to analyze what motives might outweigh the process of decision-making of users via novel statistical technique. Analysis of control variables such as age, sex, importance of SNS use and time spent in SNS was conducted as well. Data is received from the Laboratory for Social and Cognitive Informatics in HSE. Sample represented the users of the VKontakte SNS who indicated that they live in Russia (n=680). The analysis was conducted in R software using polynomial regression with response surface analysis (RSA). The findings supported the hypotheses posited in previous research by more rigorous RSA methodology, confirming the notion that self-disclosure and self-withdrawal is ruled by different motivations. Two models of self-withdrawal have consistently shown that individuals exhibit greater privacy protective behaviors when their potential costs regarding privacy outweigh the perceived benefits. Moreover, it was found that expected benefits being higher than perceived privacy risks predict the self-disclosure behavior.