Will Security and Privacy Updates Affect Users’ Privacy Choices of Mobile Apps?

There is a growing emphasis among users on safeguarding personal privacy and authorization for applications. To address this, Security and Privacy Updates (SPU) are employed to bolster app security, alleviate user apprehensions regarding security, and encourage users to share data and permissions with greater confidence. Based on the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), we propose that SPU, an IT technology itself, has a dual effect on users’ privacy choices, security threat susceptibility and security response efficacy are the two key mediators to explain this phenomenon, and that this influencing process will be moderated by user’s privacy trade-off. We will investigate this process through a set of online experiments.