Expecting the unexpected in security violations in mobile apps

Mobile apps often require numerous access and control over smartphone functionalities and users’ personal data. This increased access and control may raise users’ perception of heightened privacy leakage and security issues. This is especially the case if users’ awareness and expectations of this external access and control is not accurately recognized through proper security declarations. This proposal thus attempts to put forth an investigation on the effect of mobile users’ privacy expectation disconfirmation on their continued usage intention of mobile apps sourced from app distribution stores. Drawing upon the APCO framework, security awareness literature and the expectation-disconfirmation perspective, two key types of security awareness information are identified; namely access annotation and modification annotation. It is noted that these types of information can be emphasized in app distribution stores to reduce subsequent privacy expectation disconfirmation. Hence, this study plans to examine the downstream effect of privacy expectation disconfirmation on users’ continued usage intention. To operationalize this research, a laboratory experiment will be conducted.