A Model Integrating Privacy Theories and Social Cognitive Theory to Underestimate Online Privacy Concerns

At this time of the Internet age, online privacy becomes one of the major issues that individuals, businesses, and governments are extremely worried about. The purpose of this study is to examine how Internet users’ concerns regarding privacy when sharing personal information are reduced and the amount of self-disclosure is decreased online. By using privacy theories and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), this study suggests that by increasing Internet experience, self-efficacy, self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reaction, privacy concerns will be reduced. And Internet users with more social awareness will have more privacy concerns. This study helps researchers and Internet users to understand the privacy behaviors online and develop a model explaining these behaviors.