Happiness as a Driver of Social Exchanges
Cloarec, Julien Meyer-Waarden, Lars
Cloarec, Julien
Meyer-Waarden, Lars
Publication Type
Conference Proceeding
Editor
Supervisor
Publication Year
2019
Journal
Book
Academy of Management Proceedings
Publication Volume
2019
Publication Issue
1
Publication Begin page
12410
Publication End page
12410
Publication Number of pages
Collections
Abstract
To obtain personalization in the form of offerings and messages, consumers usually need to disclose personal information to firms. As such, the reward (i.e., personalization) of what can be referred to as a social exchange is often delayed, which increases temporal distance. Thus, according to the construal-level theory, willingness to disclose information for personalization is a decision-making process that is construed at an abstract level, which implies that affective states play a central role. Building on both social exchange theory and construal-level theory, we investigate to what extent happiness is a driver of a personalization-privacy trade-off. We also examine the moderating role of experience sharing frequency as a proxy for reciprocity. An online survey was administered to a French representative sample (n = 649) by a large consumer panel provider. The results show that happiness is the strongest driver of willingness to disclose information for personalization, thus surpassing usual privacy-related constructs (i.e. trust beliefs and risk beliefs). In line with social exchange theory, we also highlight the valuable role of reciprocity in online social exchanges.