In the contemporary digital economy environment, data functions as an asset that creates a firm's core competitive advantage and an essential resource for service hyper-personalization. However, the phenomenon of data concentration in giant platforms ...
In the contemporary digital economy environment, data functions as an asset that creates a firm's core competitive advantage and an essential resource for service hyper-personalization. However, the phenomenon of data concentration in giant platforms inevitably exposes the vulnerability of the security ecosystem and intensifies the fatal risk of large-scale personal information leaks. This study was conducted to explicate the dynamic and complex psychological mechanisms of the Privacy Paradox—an irrational attitude-behavior discrepancy phenomenon where consumers facing the severe post-breach crisis of personal information leaks on e-commerce platforms express a high level of moral anger and hostility toward platform operators, yet paradoxically choose a resigned retention rather than immediately severing service usage.
To this end, this study critically reviewed the academic limitations of rational behavioral models (e.g., the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Privacy Calculus Model) that assume perfect rationality. Furthermore, while fully introducing the Bounded Rationality perspective, which defines humans as cognitive misers seeking to minimize cognitive energy consumption, this study designed a multidimensional Dual-Path Model by integrating and extending the Enabler-Inhibitor Framework based on Dual-Factor Theory into the context of post-adoption discontinuance.
For the empirical hypothesis testing of this study, a structured survey was conducted among 400 active adult consumers in South Korea who have routinely utilized a daily-life-integrated large e-commerce platform (Coupang) for at least one year and are clearly aware of the recent large-scale personal information leak incident. Based on the collected sample data, Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) analysis and Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) were conducted using AMOS 30.0. To cross-validate the statistical robustness and objectivity of the analysis results, hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS Macro (Model 1, Model 4) estimations utilizing SPSS 30.0 were concurrently performed.
The core research findings derived through the multifaceted empirical analyses are as follows:
First, the analysis of the discontinuance enabler path proved that consumers' perceived privacy concerns and perceived severity regarding potential secondary damage, induced by the enterprise's security failure, are decisive positive (+) antecedents that significantly amplify the mediating variable, psychological betrayal. This implies that the failure of the security management system is perceived not merely as a technical error or service dissatisfaction, but as a severe psychological contract violation destroying fundamental hygiene factors that the company should rightfully guarantee.
Second, the verification of the mediated inhibitor path, which independently coexists with and preemptively hinders the enabler path, revealed that perceived benefit, a practical value routinely enjoyed through platform use, failed to significantly mitigate or offset the psychological betrayal erupting immediately after the crisis, leading to the rejection of the hypothesis. In contrast, learned helplessness, a structured state of psychological resignation that consumers internalize in the face of frequent security accident exposures and the binding force of giant monopoly systems, was found to play a powerful negative (-) buffering barrier role that directly down-regulates and suppresses the intensity of psychological betrayal.
Third, the statistical cross-validation proved that perceived privacy concerns and learned helplessness form a full mediation mechanism transitioning to the dependent variable by completely mediating psychological betrayal. Condensed emotional anger, or psychological betrayal, was identified as the most decisive and pivotal positive (+) emotional transitional factor that dramatically triggers the final discontinuance intention, moving beyond a mere passive non-use state to an active desire to sever the relationship.
Fourth, confirming the direct inhibitor path, which is the core differentiation of the research model, it was found that highly entrenched user inertia forms a cognitive short-circuit bypass path that controls behavioral intentions without consumers going through the complex rational and emotional information processing stages of psychological betrayal, thereby directly and powerfully reducing discontinuance intention. This empirically demonstrates that consumers, due to their loss aversion instinct stemming from cognitive search costs and lost opportunity costs, make a satisficing decision to maintain their existing routines with resignation, abandoning the search for alternatives even while cognitively experiencing betrayal.
Fifth, diagnosing the moderating effect of psychological switching costs, a multidimensional switching barrier, via MGA ultimately confirmed that switching costs exclusively act as a dominant buffering barrier that significantly down-adjusts and reduces the positive (+) ripple effect of psychological betrayal escalating into discontinuance intention, rather than acting as a catalyst to additionally amplify the inhibitory power of user inertia.
Sixth, the discontinuance intention finally and firmly formed after overcoming the fierce internal positive and negative conflicting dynamics was linearly and significantly linked to substantial discontinuance behaviors, such as a complete replacement with alternative platforms and a reduction in usage frequency, thereby securing the causal completeness of the entire structural equation model.
The empirical results of this study provide crucial theoretical implications by academically and elaborately structuring, at the doctoral level, a dual-path system in which positive and negative stimulus paths do not merely add to or subtract from each other but independently coexist and conflict within the cognitive structure. Practically, it strictly warns platform operators against being engrossed in providing short-term benefits such as superficial point compensations or promotions in the event of a crisis, urging them to aim for the complete and transparent restoration of the basic hygiene factor, which is the data management system. Meanwhile, it suggests that designing a personalized dashboard UI/UX that persistently visualizes the sunk costs and psychological switching costs consumers will lose at the touchpoints of membership withdrawal or cancellation (e.g., cumulative saved amount, complete initialization of customized recommendation algorithms) serves as the strongest behavioral economic defense line that delays chained defections and forces retention.