A virtual community is a focused gathering of people who interact with others through the Internet. To virtual community platform organizations, encouraging user participation is essential for profitability. Recent empirical studies have found the privacy paradox in virtual communities in which individuals state they have privacy concerns but continue to participate. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a virtual community member copes with the threats to his or her privacy in a virtual community. This study considers both information privacy and territory privacy, and explores the antecedents and behavioral outcomes of both types of privacy in virtual communities. Based on communication privacy management theory, the research model proposes several aspects of a virtual community that may influence an individual's evaluation of privacy risks, which will in turn influence individual privacy management behavior, including the revelation of private information and the regulation of access to a virtual territory. Evidence from a study of 358 virtual community members suggests that information privacy risk beliefs and territory privacy risk beliefs have different antecedents. Also, an individual with high information privacy risk beliefs and territory privacy risk beliefs will engage in territory coordination to manage the accessibility to his or her virtual territory; and an individual will share private information if engaging in territory coordination. Theoretically, this study demonstrates that a more complete conceptualization of privacy in virtual communities should consider both information and territory privacy, and that private disclosure and territory coordination are two complementary privacy management behaviors. From a practical standpoint, this study suggests virtual community platform organizations how to reduce individuals' privacy risk beliefs and encourage users to share private information. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2013. / April 29, 2013. / Privacy, Virtual Community / Includes bibliographical references. / Deborah Armstrong, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Brady, University Representative; David Paradice, Committee Member; Ashley Bush, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_183794 |
| Contributors | Lin, Shuai-Fu (authoraut), Armstrong, Deborah (professor directing dissertation), Brady, Michael (university representative), Paradice, David (committee member), Bush, Ashley (committee member), Department of Management (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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