Putting Myself Out There: Factors Predicting One’s Willingness to Share Information Online

Cory L. Armstrong ¹, Jessica Mahone ²

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Abstract

The pervasiveness of social media use has prompted extensive research examining the motivations of interactivity using this medium. The factors that contribute to one’s willingness to share information are garnering greater attention in current scholarship. This study focuses primarily on factors of privacy, personal disclosure, use of the social web, gender and the information sharing habits of others on individual’s behaviors. Findings of two online surveysindicated that willingness to personally disclose information and perceptions of others sharing habits were significant factors. Specifically, those who believe their “friends” are sharing information were more likely to disclose information about themselves.

Keywords

information sharing privacy gender social web

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.