The relationship of perceived cognitive and decisional controls in information disclosure : decomposition of perceived control

Customer information is critical for hospitality and tourism companies to provide tailored service, but customers may be reluctant to disclose their personal information to the companies. Existing research finds that perceived control is positively related to willingness to disclose, but scant research studies scrutinize its sub-concepts and their relationship with information disclosure. This study decomposed perceived control with perceived cognitive and decisional control and examined their effect on willingness to disclose personal information. The results indicated that when a privacy mechanism was available, perceived cognitive control was more influential to customers' willingness to disclose than perceived decisional control was. Findings suggest that hospitality and tourism companies that want to collect more customer data need to manipulate customers' perceived control accordingly regardless of availability of privacy protection mechanisms. Since there have been very limited, if any, prior studies examining perceived control with decomposed cognitive and decisional controls, the model verified in this study serves as a guide for future research.