Privacy is of prime importance to many individuals when they attempt to develop online social relationships. Nonetheless, it has been observed that individuals' behavior is at times inconsistent with their privacy concerns, e.g., they disclose substantial private information in synchronous online social interactions, even though they are aware of the risks involved. Drawing on the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective, this paper elucidates the interesting roles of privacy concerns and social rewards in synchronous online social interactions by examining the causes and the behavioral strategies that individuals utilize to protect their privacy. An empirical study involving 251 respondents was conducted in online chat rooms. Our results indicate that individuals utilize both self-disclosure and misrepresentation to protect their privacy and that social rewards help explain why individuals may not behave in accordance with their privacy concerns. In addition, we find that perceived anonymity of others and perceived intrusiveness affect both privacy concerns and social rewards. Our findings also suggest that higher perceived anonymity of self decreases individuals' privacy concerns, and higher perceived media richness increases social rewards. Generally, this study contributes to the information systems literature by integrating the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective to identify antecedents of privacy trade-off and predict individuals' behavior in synchronous online social interactions.

Online retailers employ various kinds of social and marketing information cues to influence consumers’ product interest and purchases. This study focuses on the effects of two types of information cues, product popularity and time restriction on product promotions, on consumers’ product approach behavior. It takes a unique perspective by examining how such effects change as consumers’ shopping goals become more concrete. The results of a field experiment and a laboratory experiment show that product popularity and time restriction may not always have a positive influence on consumers’ product approach behavior. In particular, when consumers have not yet formed specific shopping goals, product popularity and time restriction weaken each other's effects on users’ initial product judgment, whereas these two information cues reinforce each other's effects on consumers’ final product evaluation when consumers’ shopping goals have become more specific. This study deepens our understanding of the individual and interaction effects of product popularity and time restriction at different levels of consumer goal specificity. The findings have significant implications for how retailers can leverage different information cues for promoting products.

Online video platforms face the challenge of balancing the needs of their users with those of their advertisers. Although users typically prefer to have less intrusive ads, advertisers aim to effectively catch user attention. This paper investigates how the provision of ad choice affects the effectiveness of video advertising. We argue that allowing users to choose an ad to view may trigger a “conjecture-formation-and-confirmation” process that motivates users to pay more attention to the selected ad. Two online experiments and four laboratory experiments are conducted to test the theorized underlying mechanism of the ad choice effect. Study 1 finds when users are unfamiliar (versus familiar) with the content of ad options (i.e., they need to make conjectures about ad content), ad choice is more likely to increase user attention to the chosen ad. Study 2 and Study 3 show that the impact of ad choice on user attention is more likely to be positive when users are enabled to make conjectures about ad content, such as when choice options provide more relevant information about ad content. Study 4a and Study 4b provide more direct support for the underlying mechanism by showing that the ad choice effect is attenuated when users cannot form conjectures about ad content at the choice stage. Study 5 further demonstrates that the positive effect of ad choice is robust across different ad settings. Taken together, these studies show ad choice is more likely to boost the effectiveness of video advertising when the “conjecture-formation-and-confirmation” process is triggered. This paper was accepted by Kartik Hosanagar, information systems. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71702126, 72022008 and 72372112], the University Research Committee of the University of Hong Kong [Grant 201905159007], HKU Education Consulting (Shenzhen) [Theme-Based Research Fund SZRI2023-TBRF-02], and the Research Grant Council Hong Kong [Project 17502921]. Supplemental Material: The data and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.03291 .