The unexplored consequences of fear in mobile banking privacy

Purpose – Despite their potential influence on user behavior in digital contexts, emotional factors, particularly fear, are underexplored in research on privacy concerns. To address this gap, our study investigates how fear affects privacy concerns, trust beliefs, risk beliefs and the intention to use mobile banking. The study is framed using the “antecedents → privacy concerns → outcomes” model, which synthesizes empirical findings from information systems research and is augmented by behavioral economics to account for overlooked but essential factors such as emotions. Design/methodology/approach – Our research includes two different studies: (1) a laboratory experiment using both a direct (facial recognition) and self-reported measure of fear, followed by (2) an online experiment using self-reported fear scales. In both studies, we simulated an attack in which financial information is stolen. Findings – The results demonstrate that trust in mobile banking decreases privacy concerns and has a more significant effect if the user is not afraid. Fear directly affects trust and privacy concerns but not risk beliefs or intention to use. Thus, when a mobile banking user is stimulated by a fear appeal message, the fear of losing information increases, activating privacy concerns and indirectly leading to increased mobile banking risk beliefs and reduced mobile banking usage. Originality/value – Our study makes four main contributions. It demonstrates that (1) manipulating high and low fear appeal messages influences trusting beliefs and mobile banking information privacy concerns, so individuals with higher privacy concerns will be warier when using mobile banking. There exists an important boundary condition to the well-established relationship between trust and privacy concerns, such that when a mobile banking user is afraid of losing personal information, trust is not as effective in alleviating privacy concerns; (2) facial recognition can be used in privacy studies; (3) physiological responses to fear are significantly correlated with self-reported fear and (4) risk and intention to use are not directly driven by fear, so being afraid does not necessarily imply that users will stop using this technology.