Value Congruence and Trust Online: Their Impact on Privacy and Pr ...

In the first scenario, the subjects were informed that in respect to their specific values, the organization they were visiting had similar values. Explicitly, they were presented with the following statements to describe the match between their values and the organization’s values:

The survey first asked the subjects to identify the information items they would be willing to share. It then asked the following five questions as shown in Table 3 using a five-point Likert scale to capture the level of their trust in the organization they were visiting. The questions were adapted from Jarvenpaa et al. (2000). Some demographic questions were also asked in order to gain a basic profile for the subjects.

In the second scenario, the subjects were told that the website they were visiting belonged to an organization they had never interacted with before and that they had no knowledge of this organization’s values. The rest of the questions were similar to those in the first scenario. In the third scenario, the subjects were presented a set of questions that were the reverse of the first scenario (i.e., this organization opposes the political and moral causes that I support, etc.).