Social Media Privacy Concerns, Security Concerns, Trust, and Awareness: Empirical Validation of an Instrument

This paper endeavors to empirically validate an instrument that measures users' privacy concerns, security concerns, trust, and risk awareness on social media. Four constructs (privacy concerns, security concerns, trust, and risk awareness) were used, each included specific items that explained the construct. Data were collected from 154 undergraduate students from a mid-sized university in the Southeast USA and analyzed via exploratory factor analysis. All subjects were using one or more social media platforms regularly. The results showed that all four constructs of the instrument were reliable to measure measures users' privacy concerns, security concerns, trust, and risk awareness on social media.