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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Media Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1609012

Privacy Threats versus Trust: A Behavioral Decision Approach to Social Media Disclosure Intention

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
  • 2Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, Guizhou Province, China
  • 3Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Introduction: As social media becomes a central platform for self-expression and communication, users are increasingly faced with the dilemma of disclosing personal information while managing privacy risks. This study explores how privacy-related factors, namely privacy invasion experiences, privacy fatigue, and privacy concerns, are associated with users' intention to disclose on social media, with trust in social media serving as a mediating variable. Integrating behavioral decision theory and trust theory, the study aims to uncover the psychological mechanisms driving social media disclosure intention in a digital context. Methods: A quantitative survey was conducted with 787 participants to examine the proposed relationships. PLS-SEM was employed to test the hypothesized paths and mediating effects within the theoretical framework. Results: The results demonstrate that trust in social media is the most important predictor of social media disclosure intention, exceeding the negative impact of privacy-related factors. All three privacy-related variables negatively influence users' intention to disclose, with privacy concerns showing the strongest negative effect. Trust in social media mediates the relationship between privacy invasion experiences and privacy concerns and social media disclosure intention. Furthermore, we found no significant relationship between privacy fatigue and trust in social media. Discussion: The study extends existing theory by applying behavioral decision theory to the digital privacy domain and underscores the importance of trust in social media as a psychological bridge between privacy threats and social media disclosure intention.

Keywords: Social media disclosure intention, Privacy invasion experiences, privacy concerns, Privacy fatigue, Trust in social media, behavioral decision theory

Received: 09 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Omar, Qi and Ji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Fei Qi, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, 550004, Guizhou Province, China

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