Regulators have urged companies to enhance the informativeness of cybersecurity risk disclosures in financial statements. However, little is known about how the perceived attributes of cybersecurity risk disclosures may influence various stakeholders’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Drawing on the Belief Reinforcement Model (BRM) and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study examines how privacy concern moderates the role of the perceived presence of specificity and the belief about the verifiability of cybersecurity risk disclosures on trust violation and the behavioral intentions of different stakeholders (i.e. users, investors, and employees). The evidence from our experiment suggests that the perceived presence of specific disclosure elements and the belief about disclosure verifiability influences behavioral intentions for all three stakeholders through beliefs and attitudes. Further, those influences vary depending on the level of individuals’ privacy concerns.

There is limited research providing guidelines to CEOs, particularly female CEOs, about the efficacy of different responses (i.e. apology and denial) in the aftermath of an insider privacy breach incident. The study synthesizes a multitude of theories under three categories male-gender bias, same-gender bias and opposite-gender bias and uses them along with organizational justice theory to investigate the moderating role of the interaction between CEO gender and the user gender on trust restoration process after an insider breach incident. Trust restoration process is compared across different trust beliefs—ability, benevolence, and integrity. The findings show that the CEO-user gender interaction significantly shapes the trust restoration process. The findings also show that the forces that shape the initial trust work differently for trust restoration and are shaped by the underlying CEO gender—user gender combination. The research has several theoretical, managerial and social implications, and enlists several future research ideas.

Even though privacy concerns (PC) and security concerns (SC) are acknowledged as separate constructs, many studies argue that they are related or, even worse, confused. Building upon the non-overlapping SC and PC dimensions, we propose an Internet Users Information Transmission Security Concern (IUITSC) scale. We argue that the scale when used in conjunction with the PC scale would cover the entire gamut of SCs and PCs (SC–PC). The construct is tested in a nomological network of personality and trust. The article first develops the theoretical foundation for multiple factor structures including various first-order factor models as well as the second-order factor model. The results, based on extensive statistical tests and nomological examination, suggest that the IUITSC may be represented as a second-order construct comprising of authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. We argue that information assurance is the common theme that ties these constructs into a higher order IUITSC construct.

Privacy policy statements and privacy assurance cues are among the most important website features that online providers use to increase individuals’ trust and willingness to disclose private information online. The focus of this study is a comprehensive examination of the process by which privacy assurance mechanisms influence trust and the moderating role of privacy concern in this process. We use the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model to investigate the way different individuals perceive and process privacy assurance mechanisms. We argue that the trust-enhancing role of these mechanisms depends on the individual’s privacy concern. The results of this study articulate the process by which various privacy assurance mechanisms operate in enhancing an individual’s trust, and show that there are distinct behavioral differences between individuals with high- vs low-privacy concern when forming their trust to disclose private information. The paper sheds new light on the role of elaboration in the trust building process, and shows why privacy assurance mechanisms have different impacts depending on individuals’ privacy concerns.

This study examines the role individuals' frugality plays in moderating the impact of privacy and security concerns on trust-discount tradeoff. Trust-discount tradeoff measures a user's intention on a continuum to transact with a higher-trust, higher-premium website as opposed to lower-trust, higher-discount website. The hypotheses are examined in three different contexts: e-commerce, health and finance. The findings suggest that frugality does moderate the impact of privacy and security concerns on trust-discount tradeoff in all three contexts, such that security concern is positively associated with preference for higher-trust, higher-premium websites for individuals with a high level of frugality, and that privacy concern is positively associated with preference for higher-trust, higher-premium websites for individuals with a low level of frugality. However, the subsequent analysis reveals that the reasons for the above moderating impact differ depending upon the underlying contextual sensitivity. This study is one of the first to provide contextual examination of the role of frugality, privacy and security concerns in trust-discount tradeoff.