Investigating the Effect of Incidental Affect States on Privacy Behavioral Intention

Incidental affects users feel during their online activities may alter their privacy behavioral intentions. We investigate the effect of incidental affect (fear and happy) on privacy behavioral intention. We recruited 330 participants for a within-subjects experiment in three random-controlled user studies. The participants were exposed to three conditions neutral, fear, happy with standardised stimuli videos for incidental affect induction. Fear and happy stimuli films were assigned in random order. The participants' privacy behavioural intentions (PBI) were measured followed by a Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-X) manipulation check on self-reported affect. The PBI and PANAS-X were compared across treatment conditions. We observed a statistically significant difference in PBI and Protection Intention in neutral-fear and neutral-happy comparisons. However across fear and happy conditions, we did not observe any statistically significant change in PBI scores. We offer the first systematic analysis of the impact of incidental affects on Privacy Behavioral Intention (PBI) and its sub-constructs. We are the first to offer a fine-grained analysis of neutral-affect comparisons and interactions offering insights in hitherto unexplained phenomena reported in the field.