Informing Users: Effects of Notification Properties and User Characteristics on Sharing Attitudes

Information sharing on social networks is ubiquitous, intuitive, and occasionally accidental. However, people may be unaware of the potential negative consequences of disclosures, such as reputational damages. Yet, people use social networks to disclose information about themselves or others, advised only by their own experiences and the context-invariant informed consent mechanism. In two online experiments (N = 515 and N = 765), we investigated how to aid informed sharing decisions and associate them with the potential outcomes via notifications. Based on the measurements of sharing attitudes, our results showed that the effectiveness of informing the users via notifications may depend on the timing, content, and layout of the notifications, as well as on the users’ curiosity and rational cognitive style, motivating information processing. Furthermore, positive emotions may result in disregard of important information. We discuss the implications for user privacy and self-presentation. We provide recommendations on privacy-supporting system design and suggest directions for further research.