Consumer Perceived Vulnerability, privacy calculus and information disclosure: an empirical investigation in retailer loyalty program Abstract: This paper investigates how perceived vulnerability moderates the effect of privacy calculus on consumerss’ willingness to share information. Consumers’ information

This paper investigates how perceived vulnerability moderates the effect of privacy calculus on consumerss’ willingness to share information. Consumers’ information disclosure behavior has been primarily studied from “privacy calculus” approach. For example, Kehr et al (2015) defined “privacy calculus” as “a situational-specific trade-off of privacy related risk and benefit perceptions, bounded by dispositional tendencies and irrational behavior” (Kehr, et al, 2015). According to Kehr et al (2015), in addition to the benefits and risks, dispositional factors and other situational factors, their gut feeling in these situations also affect consumers information sharing decision making. Indeed, the situational factors associated with psychological limitations and the general dispositional factors make it necessary to consider the constructs such as perceived vulnerability, perceived control and perceived trust into consideration when model the privacy calculus to understand how consumers make the tradeoffs for information disclosure. Therefore, our study contributes to the privacy calculus research literature by identifying the salient factors affecting consumer information disclosure decisions and in particular by providing insights into how consumer’s perceived vulnerability could affect the salience and immediacy of privacy related constructs in their decision-making. Empirically, we use discrete choice analysis method. We provide participants with choices from bundles of attributes (constructs identified in the literature). The attributes that are shown are chosen by Sawtooth software in a way that allows all attributes to be compared to all others with the least amount of overlap. Using a monte-carlo style simulation, we can derive the relative importance of each of the attributes. This initial study will allow us to narrow down which elements are most important in a more complex choice analysis. We then use the videos to prime participants into a state of vulnerability. Finally, then we test the priming conditions to see if they make a difference in these choice methods. The theoretical significance of the research is to differentiate the effect of privacy concerns and perceived vulnerability, trust and control on consumer information disclosure. This has empirical implications for firms to find ways to enhance consumers’ data sharing/disclosure behavior.