Exploring antecedents of online privacy protection behaviors: insights from a systematic review

Abstract

Privacy protection behaviors (PPB), which diverge from disclosure behaviors in response to the rise of online privacy issues, showed people’s awareness of how to shield oneself from potentially dangerous, hurtful, or undesirable privacy experiences. However, since PPB is a multidimensional concept and depends on research settings, there is little research on thoroughly investigating relevant predictors in PPB. More importantly, research in this area has produced unclear results and classifications. A systematic review regarding PPB was conducted. 30 papers were finally included to indicate those significant relationships between antecedents and PPB in different research settings. Findings indicated that protection motivation theory (PMT) is the most robust conceptual framework. There is an overlap regarding the definition between PPB and other online privacy behaviors. Despite the emergence of numerous new variables, privacy concerns appear most frequently as both independent or mediating variables.