Happiness as a Driver of Social Exchanges
(A2019-8327)

AUTHORS

Lars Meyer-Waarden, Toulouse School of Management Research -CNRS University Toulouse 1 Capitole; Julien Cloarec, TSM-Research, Université Toulouse Capitole, CNRS; Andreas Munzel, Toulouse School of Management Research-CNRS University Toulouse 1 Capitole

KEYWORDS

Social exchange theory; Happiness; Personalization-privacy trade-off

ABSTRACT

Disclosing personal information for personalization is a social exchange. As such, the reward (i.e., personalization) is often delayed, which increases temporal distance. Thus, according to the construal-level theory, willingness to disclose information for personalization is a process that is construed at an abstract level, where affective states play a central role. Building on social exchange and construal-level theories, we investigate to what extent happiness is a driver of a personalization-privacy trade-off. 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).