Hi Scott, it's indeed a tricky subject, and one that I also struggle with, as a privacy researcher.

I think one of the main problems of privacy calculus is that, in its focus on incentive/disincentive mechanisms, it presumes that individuals act *rationally* online. This rationality crashes against users' habits, which are typically a drive of mobile technology use, and discounts how intrinsically personal, cultural, and to some extent emotional the concept of privacy is.

Not to say that it's not a valid explanation for how individuals work wrt privacy, but it's a bit binary. The same concept is, in my opinion, better expressed by the idea of Privacy Trade-offs - a more nuanced approach to how users operate. Which still has flaws, however, and still leaves out a lot that is still to be understood.

Having said all of that! On a higher level, I don't think you should reject a theoretical model because "it could be the next TAM". Of course, we all want to create research that is novel, relevant and interesting BUT also, I see a risk in fitting a new theoretical model into one's research just to avoid referencing to an old, overused one that is now sort of frowned upon. Same is true for methods. Personal opinion, however.

I'm wondering if The enhanced fear appeal framework might serve your research. One of their cautions considerations applies to behavioral information security.

Johnston, A. C., Warkentin, M., & Siponen, M. (2015). An enhanced fear appeal rhetorical framework: Leveraging threats to the human asset through sanctioning rhetoric. MIS Quarterly, 39(1), 113-A117. doi:10.25300/misq/2015/39.1.06

Hi everyone,

thanks a lot for your great responses!

The opinion so far seems to be, that indeed the privacy calculus is at risk of being the next TAM, due to the assumption that rational processes drive people's behavior, which might not be true for many cases. On the other hand, all theories have boundaries and in certain scenarios privacy calculus might still be worth exploring.

Ben and William:

Thanks a lot for your literature suggestions. I will take a look at them!

Maybe we can get some more opinions on this. It would be great to get better understanding of how the community sees this.

Again thanks a lot for all the answers so far.

I favored Tobias' answer as well.

Let me suggest Soloves work on understnading privacy to your literature list. It helps understanding the complex nature as well as its historical development together with technological advances.

Solove, Daniel J. "Understanding privacy." (2008).

Thanks a lot for your additional literature suggestions and thoughts Ben and Timo.

Literature suggested thus far:

Hi Scott,

I think there have been some really useful suggestions made. I briefly read your Genome paper as I was unable to attend ICIS and it is a really interesting paper. The altruistic theme was something I found in my own research on privacy concerns and technology adoption/continunance which also encompassed views towards health information disclosure. I think the different methodology of the paper is the strength to be highlighted. Also, I still believe the privacy calculus is a good foundational theory/framework. Given your context is new and the study is exploratory I think the privacy calculus is quite fitting. It is also a framework that could do with further exploration to extend/develop an understanding in other contexts. I'm not sure how you plan to extend the work but what might be of interest would be to combine those other theories to build upon the privacy calculus so the theories around fear appeals might help tease out the influence of the threats on motivation, motivational theories might also work to try understand what shifts the balance between threats/benefits and drives the decision to consent. The cognitive theories as I'm sure you know are gaining traction in IS. I would recommend the following paper if you haven't come across it yet. Dinev, T., McConnell, A.R. and Smith, H.J., 2015. Research Commentary—Informing Privacy Research Through Information Systems, Psychology, and Behavioral Economics: Thinking Outside the “APCO” Box. Information Systems Research, 26(4), pp.639-655.

If you do additional rounds of the delphi, that would also strengthen the methodology. I wish you the best of luck in continuing this interesting work and look forward to reading it.

Best,

Grace

Hi Scott,

it was pleasure meeting you at ICIS and indeed your paper is interesting.

in my view, most privacy researchers adopt/adapt some form of the privacy calculus, even if the calculus is not mentioned, what is missing however is the boundary conditions to this calculus (e.g., cognitive, motivational, situational factors, to name a few). Identifying these boundary conditions could be our way as privacy researchers to understand the complexity of privacy-related decision making.

good luck!

Hi everyone, thank you for your interesting suggestions

Thanks a lot for your thoughts and suggestions Grace. We are currently doing additional rounds of the Delphi study and also use a slightly different sampling strategy (donors vs. non-donors vs. professionals). Hopefully the picture will be a little clearer after that. For further research, we also plan on looking at the influence of social distance (between donors and beneficiaries of genome data sharing as well as between donors and those fearing risks of genome data sharing). You can find a work-in-progress paper titled “Individuals’ Willingness to Share Private Genome Data: Towards a Non-Personal Privacy Calculus” here on Researchgate.

It was indeed a pleasure meeting you at ICIS Tawfiq. I enjoyed your presentations, they provided some interesting thoughts for my research. Also, good luck with continuing your research.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts and encouraging comments Ruwan. After having talked to quite a few scholars, I agree that the privacy calculus is maybe not the most accurate representation of human decision-making processes but a nonetheless a worthwhile starting point for investigating information disclosure/sharing behavior. We should strive to augment the calculus and come up with enhanced theories based on the privacy calculus that capture human behavior more accurately. I will make sure to check out your research as well. Good luck!

Again, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion so far. It is really helpful and great to see such a lively discussion about the pros and cons of using the privacy calculus in our research.

Hi everyone,

a recent MISQ article by Adjerid, Peer, and Acquisti might be interesting regarding this topic: https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2018/14316

Best,

Scott