Protection or Cynicism? Dual Strategies for Coping with Privacy Threats

Dealing with privacy threats and adopting appropriate strategies to manage personal information have become crucial challenges for internet users. While adaptive problem-focused coping (APFC) has been extensively discussed in the literature on information privacy, little is known about maladaptive emotion-focused coping (MEFC). This paper proposes that individuals employ privacy protection motivation (a form of APFC) and privacy cynicism (a form of MEFC), according to their threat and coping appraisals. These two coping strategies will then influence their behaviour regarding the disclosure of personal information on the internet. Offering an empirical analysis of 346 samples of survey data from China, this paper reveals that privacy cynicism, which is mainly affected by deep concerns about privacy and high self-efficacy but low response efficacy, and inconsistency between users’ motivations for protecting their privacy and their actual disclosure behavior are the reasons for the privacy paradox. This study provides crucial theoretical support and practical guidance for the privacy management of internet users’ information.