Perceived ephemerality, privacy calculus, and the privacy settings of an ephemeral social media site

Ephemerality, a technical innovation in social media, aims to design a system to erase communication artifacts after a short period. Ephemerality-based affordances are attracting growing attention as they allow users to maintain a delicate balance between information disclosure and privacy protection in the social media world. Despite its high practical relevance, few studies have provided insight into how ephemerality-presented information disclosure impacts users' self-disclosure intentions on the basis of a cost-benefit trade-off. This study sought to fill this gap under the structure of privacy calculus theory to determine the influence of ephemerality on the tension between information-privacy concerns and information disclosure. This study developed a theoretical model integrating perceived ephemerality and tested it using online survey data collected from 302 “Visible to Friends” active Chinese users in eight Chinese universities. The results confirmed that individuals' perceptions of the ephemerality of technology features significantly impacted users’ self-disclosure intentions by counteracting perceived severity and perceived intrusion concerning privacy risks. Furthermore, perceived ephemerality was shown to positively predict the constructs of benefits, including perceived usefulness and perceived controllability, to significantly affect self-disclosure intentions. Results are validated in an ephemeral social media context, WeChat Moments, and the theoretical and practical implications are discussed. •Privacy-related decision-making in the ephemeral media environment was examined.•This study was implemented via interview data (n = 20) and survey data (n = 302) from WeChat users.•Perceived ephemerality effectively motivated users' self-disclosure intention.•Perceibed ephemerality weakened perceived privacy intrusion and severity.•Perceived ephemerality improved perceived usefulness and perceived controllability.