Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 821–826

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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Privacy, trust and control: Which relationships with online

self-disclosure?
Stefano Taddei ⇑, Bastianina Contena
Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A number of studies have examined the relationship between privacy concerns, perceived control over
Available online 16 January 2013 information, trust and online self-disclosure, highlighting different points of view to understand this con-
nection. This paper intends to compare these different models of explanation for self-disclosure behaviors
Keywords: in online social networks. Three different hypotheses are verified, using mediation and moderation anal-
Online self-disclosure yses. The results allow underling the effect of the interaction between privacy concerns and trust on
Trust online self-disclosure, along with the absence of a direct influence of privacy concerns on disclosure itself.
Privacy concern
The results suggest practical implications for online social network providers, most of all with regard to
Online social network
privacy policies in online environments.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction line group. Moreover, many sites require disclosure of necessary

1.1. Online self-disclosure
Self-disclosure is the process of communication about the self
to other persons (Wheeless & Grotz, 1976). Originally studied in
a natural context by Jourard (1964), self-disclosure is characterized
by breadth and depth; breadth refers to the amount of information
revealed and depth to the degree of intimacy in the act of disclos-
ing information. The first dimension is given by the frequency and
duration of the disclosing act and the second by a person’s intent,
honesty and accuracy. Disclosure of information about oneself is
related to well-being, relationship maintenance and intimacy cre-
ation, psychotherapeutic processes and therapeutic alliance. In
the last few decades, it has become a central phenomenon even
for the studies of computer-mediate communication (CMC), partic-
ularly for researches about the formation and maintenance of rela-
tionships, and the management of privacy and trust in the online
environment with a particular attention to interactions in online
social networks (for a review of literature, see Joinson & Paine,
2007).
In fact, activities on the Internet require a high amount of
disclosure for several reasons; Tidwell and Walther (2002) under-
lined that online self-disclosure serves to reduce the uncertainty of
interactions, and other authors (Galegher, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1998)
highlighted its role in legitimating the access to a person in an on-
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Dipartimento di Psicologia Via di San Salvi, 12,
Padiglione 26, 50135 Firenze, Italy. Tel.: +39 055 2055861; fax: +39 055 6236047.
E-mail addresses: stefano.taddei@psico.unifi.it (S. Taddei), bastianina.contena@
unifi.it (B. Contena).
information to purchase objects or services and to record users’
accounts (Metzger, 2004, 2006).
Nevertheless, the birth of online social networks (OSNs) has in-
creased the necessity for online disclosure. In OSNs, people ex-
change information and reveal data about themselves, and these
online environments are organized to elicit the disclosure of infor-
mation that is related to many positive aspects such as the oppor-
tunity to maintain relationships with absent friends, establish
new friendships, and find support and information (Ellison,
Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). But some risks are associated with the
use of these environments. In fact, revealing and obtaining personal
information on the Web is correlated with legal issues such as def-
amation, criminal law, harassment, sexual predation, intellectual
property rights, and many others (de Zwart, Lindsay, Henderson,
& Phillips, 2011). The Federal Communication Commission, (2009)
identified many risks related to OSN use; in particular, for teenagers
and young girls and men, the most important risk is exposure to
inappropriate content, fraud and scams and privacy impairment.
Psychological studies have attempted to investigate the psycholog-
ical aspects related to online disclosure behaviors, bearing in mind
that in the online context the same definition of self-disclosure can
change.
On the Web, in fact, self-disclosure refers not only to the
amount of information that an Internet user decides to reveal to
others (Joinson & Paine, 2007), but also to the ease with which a
user can be identified as a real person (Gandey, 2000), and in fact
one relevant aspect of online interaction is the opportunity to
remain anonymous. Using the Social Identity model of Deindividu-
ation Effects (SIDE; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995; Spears, Lea,
Corneliussen, Postmes, & Harr, 2002), some authors (Coffey &

0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.11.022
822 S. Taddei, B. Contena / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 821–826
Woolworth, 2004) have underlined the central role of anonymity
which can elicit discrimination and inappropriate behaviors, and
even permits people to express unpopular views, obtaining atten-
tion for minority groups (McKenna & Bargh, 1998), and increases
the degree of self-disclosure in shy people (Brunet & Schmidt,
2007). In particular, as underlined by Papacharissi (2002), Web
space is an ideal setting for the self-presentation of individuals:
according to Goffman (1959), online environments seem to be like
a stage where people can manipulate information, choosing what
to disclose and what to hide. On the Web, people can choose to ex-
press the characteristics that they recognize as more important for
themselves or more suited to the context: for example, on online
dating sites people build avatars that represent and emphasize fea-
tures that they consider relevant for the context (Vasalou & Join-
son, 2009). In online environments this ability to choose
information and maintain a certain degree of anonymity can in-
crease self-disclosure (Joinson, 2001), reducing privacy concerns
(Moon, 2000). However, people explain their unwillingness to dis-
close personal information in an online context with privacy con-
cerns and worries about their control over information (Metzger,
2004).
If, on the one hand, online environments can elicit self-disclo-
sure thanks to their characteristics which decrease vulnerability
(Ben-Ze’ev, 2003), on the other hand the perception of having to re-
veal certain information can increase privacy concerns and de-
crease online self-disclosure (Joinson & Paine, 2007), highlighting
a direct relationship between privacy concerns and self-disclosure.
This seems especially true with regard to OSNs, which represent
environments in which self-disclosure is not only an outcome of
interactions but a necessary requirement for their use because they
consider the interaction between people to be a specific aim of
their functioning. On OSNs, users are encouraged to post photos
and videos and to share personal information about interests, hob-
bies, sexual preferences, religious beliefs and social attitudes
(Ledbetter, Mazer, DeGroot, Meyer, Mao, & Swafford, 2011), in line
with the principle that the presence of other users who disclose
information could increase the reciprocity of the process, fostering
self-disclosure itself. However, this openness of self implies a ma-
jor threat to privacy, and to understand this paradoxical relation-
ship other aspects, like trust and control, seem relevant.
1.2. Privacy, trust and control: between mediation and moderation
Privacy is defined as a process of anonymity preservation and so
it is strongly connected with control over information about the
self. In online environments, people who perceive higher threats
to privacy are less disposed to disclosing information about the self
because they perceive themselves as less able to control informa-
tion and protect themselves too. Contrarily, when people perceive
lower privacy risks and higher control, such as when privacy poli-
cies are clearly exposed, they disclose more personal information
(Weber, 2009). A chain of relationships has been described in
which the perception of control influences the general trust, and
the general trust reduces the perception of privacy risk (Krasnova,
Spiekermann, Koroleva, & Hildebrand, 2010). This last dimension
determines self-disclosure behaviors (Fig. 1). In this model, trust
– defined as the belief that legal structure, providers’ characteris-
tics and OSN members’ characteristics inhibit opportunistic and
Fig. 1. Mediation role of privacy concerns in relationship between general trust and online self disclosure.
dangerous behaviors because of their competence, benevolence
and integrity (McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002; 2000) – is
a necessary condition for disclosing information, but its influence
on self-disclosure is only indirect (Zimmer, Arsal, Al-Marzouq, &
Grover, 2010).
With regard to the relationship between trust and self-disclo-
sure, other authors (Fogel & Nehmad, 2009; Frye & Dornisch,
2010; Mesch, 2012) underline instead that trust influences self-
disclosure directly: users with a high level of trust are more com-
fortable with intimate topics and so they disclose more personal
information; moreover, it could be the construct of privacy to influ-
ence trust and not vice versa. Even regarding the relationships be-
tween control over information and privacy risk, some authors
describe a different direction of influence: Olivero and Lunt
(2004) underline that a lower level of privacy concern increases
the perception of control over information and consequently of
trust, producing a higher amount of online self-disclosure. From
this point of view, it is possible to identify an effect of privacy con-
cerns on control and a direct effect of control on trust, which seems
to influence online self-disclosure, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
The different results of the varying studies allow the hypothesis
of a complex role for privacy risks that could moderate the
relationship between trust and self-disclosure. As pointed out by
Joinson, Reips, Buchanan, and Paine Schofield (2010), the nature
of the relationships between privacy, trust and online disclosure
behaviors is problematic and it makes an interaction between pri-
vacy and trusting in their action on self-disclosure possible. Some
authors (Mothersbaugh, Foxx, Beatty, & Wang, 2012) have in fact
emphasized that worries about privacy do not have an overall ef-
fect on disclosure but act only on the most sensitive information
when trust is low, interacting with this variable, suggesting a mod-
eration role for privacy concerns that could interact with trust to
determine online self-disclosure (Fig. 3).
1.3. Aims
In online environments, not only self-disclosure, but many
variables that influence it, appear to be difficult to define. If online
self-disclosure includes the opportunity to be identified as a real
person, privacy refers to the maintenance of anonymity, control
to the ability to manage information, and trust involves the belief
that others could be benevolent, honest and competent, the rela-
tionships between all these components seem to be very complex
and, as underlined by Joinson et al. (2010), not yet established
indisputably. As mentioned in Section 1.2, it is possible to point
out three different points of view about the relationship between
control, trust, privacy concerns and online self-disclosure: on the
one hand (a) the perception of privacy concerns could be deter-
mined by trust and the worries about privacy could directly influ-
ence the amount of self-disclosure behaviors; on the other (b)
privacy concerns could directly influence control, which could
determine the degree of trust, which to determine the online
self-disclosure; and (c) privacy concerns could be unable to predict
self-disclosure behaviors in the online environment, unlike trust.
In this way, privacy concerns should be a moderating factor in
the relationship between perceived control, trust and online
self-disclosure.
 S. Taddei, B. Contena / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 821–826 823

Fig. 2. Mediation role of general trust in the relationship between control over information and online self-disclosure.

Fig. 3. Moderation role of general trust and privacy concerns.

In light of the different ways of understanding the relationship 2.2. Measures

between control, trust, privacy concerns and self-disclosure set out
in 1.2, it is possible to formulate three different hypotheses that
the present research intends to investigate:
 HP1: Perceived control directly influences the perception of
trust in OSNs; the general trust influences the perception of
privacy concerns and this last variable is directly connected
with the degree of online self-disclosure behaviors with a medi-
ating effect, as shown in Fig. 1.
 HP2: Privacy concerns influence the degree of perceived control
which, in turn, influences the general trust in OSNs. This last
variable is directly connected with the degree of online self-dis-
closure behaviors with a mediating effect, as shown in Fig. 2.
 HP3: Privacy concerns represent a variable able to moderate the
relationship between perceived control, general trust and
online self-disclosure behaviors interacting with trust itself, as
shown in Fig. 3.
 The specific aim of this study is to verify which of these three
hypotheses will be able to best explain the online self-disclo-
sure behaviors.
All the subjects completed an online version of a questionnaire
made up of 4 scales for a total of 47 items inspired by the work of
Krasnova, Kolesnikova, and Guenther (2010), who have developed
different measurement scales using the most significative items in
the literature. The scale of Perceived Control over Informations (PCI)
assesses the perception of OSN users about the possibility of man-
aging their own information. The Privacy Concerns (PC) scale
reflects the subject’s evaluation about what happens to the dis-
closed information in terms of privacy violations and the damage
and likelihood associated with them. General Trust (GT) investi-
gates the degree of trust that subjects accord to the provider, legal
framework, other users and transparency that they perceive about
information management. Finally, the Self-Disclosure (SD) scale
measures the amount of information that a user provides on their
OSN profile. All items required a response on a Likert scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). In Table 1 the structure of
the questionnaire and the internal consistency values of the scales
are presented. All scales show high internal consistency, so we can
assume that they measure the constructs examined effectively.

2. Materials and methods

2.3. Procedures
2.1. Survey designs and participants
The collected data were subjected to descriptive analysis to
The data were collected in the first two weeks of February 2012. examine the characteristics of the participants regarding the vari-
The subjects were recruited by a snowball sampling starting from ables studied. Analyses of mediating and moderating effects were
Facebook profiles of students from the Psychology Faculty at Flor- conducted using statistical regression models. Mediational analysis
ence University who were asked to participate in the research by attempts to identify the intermediary process that connects the
completing an online questionnaire accessible by clicking on the
appropriate link. The questionnaire was preceded by an informa- Table 1
tion page about the purpose of the research, protection of data Internal consistency of scales, minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation for
and their treatment in an aggregated form. all variables.
The total sample was made up of 718 OSN users, 198 male and Items a Mint Maxt Mean St.
520 female, aged from 18 to 50 (mean age = 25.38; st. dev. = 5.08). Dev.
The mean age of the male subjects was 27.29 (st. dev. = 5.85) and Perceived Control over 5 .83 1 7 4.40 1.27
that of the female subjects 24.65 (st. dev. = 4.55). The analysis of Information (PCI)
frequency distribution by age shows that 90.1% of the subjects fell Privacy Concerns (PC) 18 .92 1 7 4.03 1.19
between 18 and 30 years. For this reason the final sample com- General Trust (GT) 18 .93 1 7 3.41 1.01
Self-Disclosure (SD) 6 .86 1 7 3.23 1.36
prised 647 OSN users (75.7% of whom were female) with a mean
age of 24.12 (st. dev. = 3.06). a = Cronbach’s alpha; St. Dev. = standard deviation.
824 S. Taddei, B. Contena / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 821–826

independent variable with the outcome variable while modera- Table 3

tional analysis attempts to identify variables that strengthen and/ Trust and Privacy concerns: mediation analysis.

or change the direction of the relationship between independent B SE b R2 R2 change Sig.

and outcome variables (Muller, Judd, & Yzerbyt, 2005). Even if all First mediation analysis
dependent, independent and mediator variables are correlated Step one
and therefore the causal steps approach, used for this type of anal- MV: General Trust
ysis, can be used, it is possible to notice that this method has re- IV: Perceived Control .37 .03 .47 .22 .000
cently been criticized, first of all because of the fact that it does DV: Privacy Risks
not provide a statistical test of the size of the indirect effects, MV: General Trust .27 .05 .22 .05 .000
and MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, and Sheets (2002) DV: Privacy Risks
have proposed the intervening variable approach, solving these IV: Perceived Control .01 .04 .01 .01 .003
problems connected to the causal steps approach. The first step MV: General Trust .26 .05 .22 .05 .04 .000
in this approach consists of calculating a regression model with Step two
the independent variable and the mediator. Then it is necessary MV: Privacy Risks
to analyze the effect of the mediator on the dependent variable, IV: General Trust .27 .05 .22 .05 .000
DV: Self-Disclosure
controlling the effect of the independent variable.
MV: Privacy Risks .14 .04 .12 .01 .002
DV: Self Disclosure
3. Results IV: General Trust .42 .05 .31 .07 .000
MV: Privacy Risks .22 .04 .19 .10 .03 .000

As presented in Table 1, participants showing a mean score on

the PC scale indicates that users do not perceive high risks related
to the privacy violations that could occur on OSNs. For the PCI Table 4
Effects of control and trust: mediation analysis.
scale, users show a low perception of control. Participants show
a low level of GT in the OSN system and functioning and a still low- B SE b R2 R2 change Sig.
er level of SD. Second mediation analysis
The analysis of correlation indices (Table 2) allowed confirma- Step one
tion that all variables were correlated even if some correlations MV: Perceived Control
were very weak. In particular, SD showed a weak correlation with IV: Privacy Risks .12 .04 .12 .01 .003
PC (r = .12) and PCI (r = .20) and a higher one with GT (r = .27). With DV: General Trust
MV: Perceived Control .37 .03 .47 .22 .000
regard to GT, it was possible to notice a significative correlation
DV: General Trust
with PCI (r = .47) and a weaker one with PC (r = .22). IV: Privacy Risks .14 .03 .17 .05 .000
A formal mediation analysis was used to test the relationships MV: Perceived Control .36 .03 .45 .25 .20 .000
in hypothesis 1 (HP1). Step two
For this hypothesis, in step one a regression model was calcu- MV: General Trust
lated with the independent variable (IV) Perceived Control over IV: Perceived Control .37 .03 .47 .22 .000
Informations and the mediating variable (MV) General Trust DV: Self Disclosure
MV: General Trust .36 .05 .27 .07 .000
(Table 3).
DV: Self Disclosure
The model was significative (F = 184.24; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :22). IV: Perceived Control .10 .05 .09 .04 .000
After this, a model with GT as independent variable and PC as MV: General Trust .31 .06 .23 .08 .04 .000
dependent variable was calculated; it was significative (F = 34.17;
sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :05). When the regression model was calculated
to explore the mediating effects of GT in the relationship between Table 5
PCI and PC (F = 17.10; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :05), the role of trust re- Effects of Privacy concerns and Trust interaction.
sulted in being significative and the control lost its significance.
B SE b
In step two, GT was able to predict the degree of perception of
DV: Self-Disclosure
PC (F = 34.17; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :05), but there was an absence of
IV: General Trust .36 .05 .27**
relationship between this last variable and the amount of self-dis- DV: Self-Disclosure
closure in OSNs (F = 9.44; sig. = .002; R2Adj ¼ :01). When PC were IV: Privacy Concerns .14 .04 .12
added in the relationship between GT and SD, they both became DV: Self-Disclosure
predictors of SD, and the model was significative (F = 38.48; IV: Privacy Concerns  General Trust .08 .10 .31**

sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :10). **

Sig. = .000.
With regard to the second alternative hypothesis (HP2), in step
one, a regression model was calculated with the independent var-
iable PC and the mediator PCI (Table 4); the model was not signi-
ficative (F = 8.77; sig. = .003). PCI appeared to be a good predictor of GT (F = 184.22; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :22). Even if PC does not have
a direct effect on PCI, these two variables together seemed to influ-
ence the perception of GT (F = 108.22; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :25). As
Table 2 mediation analysis in Table 4 shows, PCI predicted the GT in the
Relationships between measured variables: correlation analysis between control,
OSNs (F = 184.22; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :22), and GT predicted SD
privacy concerns, trust and online self-disclosure.
(F = 50.36; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :07). When the regression model to
PCI PC GT SD verify the mediating role of GT in the relationship between PCI
Perceived Control over Information (PCI) 1 .12 **
.47 **
.20** and SD was calculated, it resulted in being significative
Privacy Concerns (PC) 1 .22** .12** (F = 27.51; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :08).
General Trust (GT) 1 .27**
The analysis of mediation effects confirmed the causal chain be-
Self-Disclosure (SD) 1
tween control, trust and self-disclosure, highlighting a moderator
**
Significance at level of .001. role for the perception of privacy concerns. When a regression
 S. Taddei, B. Contena / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 821–826
model was calculated to verify the influence of interaction be-
tween GT and PC on SD (Table 5), it was possible to notice that it
was significative (F = 108.22; sig. = .000; R2Adj ¼ :10).
4. Discussion
The comparison between the explanatory hypotheses about the
relationships between the variables implicated in the process of
online self-disclosure allows the specific roles for the constructs
proposed to be confirmed. In particular, with regard to the hypoth-
esis one, it is possible to highlight that the relationship between
control over information and trust appears to be confirmed. As
pointed out by Joinson et al. (2010), the degree of control over
information makes people sure about their ability to manage it
and so increases their trust in the whole online social network sys-
tem. The perception of trust seems to have a negative effect on pri-
vacy concerns: an increase in trust causes a reduction in the
perception of the risk connected with privacy, in accordance with
Zimmer et al. (2010). Contrary to previous research (Krasnova &
Spiekermann et al., 2010), the perception of risks connected to pri-
vacy issues cannot directly influence the amount of self-disclosure
on OSNs.
Furthermore, with regard to hypothesis two, the perception of
risks connected with privacy management seems unable to di-
rectly influence the degree of control over information. Contrary
to the results in Olivero and Lunt (2004), the level of privacy wor-
ries does not decrease control over information. However, the di-
rect relationships between trust and online self-disclosure appear
to be confirmed in line with the results of Frye and Dornisch
(2010).
As regards the third hypothesis, the users’ worries about privacy
are implicated in the online disclosure process in interaction with
the degree of trust, as underlined by Mothersbaugh et al. (2012),
and this last construct appears to be the most important variable
for online behaviors of openness. Overall, it is possible to empha-
size how risks interact with trust in influencing self-disclosure, giv-
ing greater explanatory power to the hypothesis of a moderating
effect between these variables.
5. Conclusions
This study makes a contribution to research about the process
of online self-disclosure. The findings suggest a central role for
trust and control regarding online self-disclosure behaviors and
make clear the need for these environments to take on character-
istics that would make users more able to manage information
and more secure than the policies of privacy protection and trans-
parency implemented by providers. The fact that privacy concerns
are not able to directly influence the degree of self-disclosure on-
line may show that Internet users, and particularly young people,
do not have a detrimental fear for their privacy that determines
their online behavior, but that control and trust are crucial and
more able to influence their effective disclosure behavior. OSN
users may be much more flexible and willing to open themselves
to what is commonly considered. These results suggest the rele-
vance for OSN providers to design an environment in which people
perceive a high control over information by making their manage-
ment and motivations for requested data clear and transparent,
increasing their trust in online social network systems.
Several limits are detectable in this study. First of all, the defini-
tions of the variables studied are still under debate, particularly as
regards their transposition into online environments, and this im-
plies the presence of different content under the same construct.
The fact that the variance of online self-disclosure explained is still
not high probably indicates the need to investigate new and more
825
effective predictors, or to make a better operationalization of the
proposed constructs. Future research could implement other vari-
ables and detect online disclosure behavior by analyzing the online
interaction in terms of constructing social networks and the con-
tent of dynamic social interactions.
Aknowledgements
The authors thank to Doctor Alessandro Fabbri for his help dur-
ing data collection.
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