Investigation of the Effect of Incidental Fear Privacy Behavioral Intention (Technical Report)

TL;DR

This study systematically examines how incidental emotions like fear and happiness influence users' privacy behavioral intentions, revealing significant effects in neutral comparisons but not between emotional states, providing new insights into emotional impacts on privacy decisions.

Contribution

First systematic analysis of incidental affect's impact on privacy behavioral intention with detailed neutral-affect comparisons and interaction insights.

Findings

Significant difference in PBI between neutral-fear and neutral-happy conditions.

No significant change in PBI between fear and happiness conditions.

Provides new understanding of incidental affect influence on privacy behavior.

Abstract

Background. Incidental emotions users feel during their online activities may alter their privacy behavioral intentions. Aim. We investigate the effect of incidental affect (fear and happiness) on privacy behavioral intention. Method. We recruited $330$ participants for a within-subjects experiment in three random-controlled user studies. The participants were exposed to three conditions \textsf{neutral}, \textsf{fear}, \textsf{happiness} with standardised stimuli videos for incidental affect induction. Fear and happiness were assigned in random order. The participants' privacy behavioural intentions (PBI) were measured followed by a Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-X) manipulation check on self-reported affect. The PBI and PANAS-X were compared across treatment conditions. Results. We observed a statistically significant difference in PBI and Protection Intention in neutral-fear and neutral-happy comparisons. However across fear and happy conditions, we did not observe any statistically significant change in PBI scores. Conclusions. We offer the first systematic analysis of the impact of incidental affects on Privacy Behavioral Intention (PBI) and its sub-constructs. We are the first to offer a fine-grained analysis of neutral-affect comparisons and interactions offering insights in hitherto unexplained phenomena reported in the field.