Do context and personality matter? Trust and privacy concerns in disclosing private information online Gaurav Bansal a, *, Fatemeh Mariam Zahedi b,1 , David Gefen c,2 a Austin E. Cofrin School of Business, University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA b Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA c LeBow School of Management, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA 1. Introduction Trust has been the fundamental pre-requisite for the progress of commerce and prosperity in human societies [45]. Gefen [48] was among the first to demonstrate the similarly critical role of trust in ecommerce. Trust is the willingness to depend on another person or institution based on the belief in the integrity, ability, and benevolence of the other party [46,90,93]. Trust is a central determinant of behavior across situations because it determines the extent to which people are willing to depend on others [90]. Trust is a social phenomenon that can downplay the social complexity involved in assessing others’ motives and behaviors and thus can be valuable in social interactions [53,85]. Research on traditional business interactions has demonstrated the significant role of trust [25,35,46,78]. Research on online purchasing activities has demonstrated the singularly critical role of trust in online business transactions [48,51,68,77,86,93,106,108]. Although the central role of trust as a major type of social capital in online activities is well established [33,45,124], inadequate research on the role of context and trustee attributes in the formation of this critical social capital has been conducted. Context and getting to know your customers are now considered among the main principles of forward-looking businesses at Google [118]. The business mantra ‘‘getting to know your customer’’ requires learning what motivates and concerns them. Trust is formed and modified within the business interaction context and influenced by customers’ attributes. Various person- ality traits have emerged as salient attributes in doing business in the online social environment [64,135]. Although context and customer attributes in terms of their personalities, concerns, and experiences are of great interest in the industry literature, there has been inadequate systematic Information & Management 53 (2016) 1–21 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 27 February 2014 Received in revised form 3 August 2015 Accepted 8 August 2015 Available online 18 August 2015 Keywords: Trust Personality Privacy Context sensitivity Theory of reasoned action Prospect theory TRA-Privacy A B S T R A C T Research and business practice have already established the central role of trust in business, particularly in online interactions. Many online business exchanges require the disclosure of sensitive personal information on a regular basis. Simultaneously, customers are reluctant to disclose private information online due to concerns about privacy. Thus, trust plays a critical role in such disclosures. However, a number of factors could influence the extent of customers’ trust and their willingness to disclose their private information. In this study, we explore the critical roles of two sets of factors: the sensitivity of the context within which the private information is disclosed and the customer’s personality. Our theory building is based on the contextualization of the theory of reasoned action (TRA-Privacy) and its synthesis with Prospect theory. Our theory argues that context sensitivity as a moderator and individuals’ salient attributes in terms of personality types and privacy concern are critical factors impacting trust and the willingness to disclose personal information. Our results indicate that context moderates the parameters and path structure of the trust model and that the influence of personality on privacy concern and trust depends on the nature of the context. Applying these ‘‘who’’ and ‘‘where’’ aspects of theory building, the study opens a new avenue of context-related research that can further increase the specificity and richness of trust and privacy research. The study also provides a new perspective in trust scholarship, therein requiring the examination of three inter-related components: trustee, trustor and the context of trust. ß 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 920 465 2216; fax: +1 920 465 2660. E-mail addresses: bansalg@uwgb.edu (G. Bansal), zahedi@uwm.edu (F.M. Zahedi), gefend@drexel.edu (D. Gefen). 1 Tel.: +1 414 229 6454. 2 Tel.: +1 215 895 2148. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Information & Management jo u rn al h om ep ag e: ww w.els evier.c o m/lo c ate/im http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2015.08.001 0378-7206/ß 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.