It pays to be forthcoming: timing of data breach announcement, trust violation, and trust restoration
研究电商公司数据泄露公告的及时性对消费者信任的影响，发现延迟公告会导致信任下降更大，且后续提供身份保护后修复的信任仍低于及时公告的公司。
Purpose This research examines the relationship between the timeliness in announcing the discovery of a data breach and consumer trust in an e-commerce company, as well as later trust-rebuilding efforts taken by the company to compensate users impacted by the breach. Design/methodology/approach A survey experiment was used to examine the effect of both trust-reducing events (announced data breaches) and trust-enhancing events (provision of identity theft protection and credit monitoring) on consumer trust. The timeliness of the breach announcement by an e-commerce company was manipulated between two randomly assigned groups of subjects; one group viewed an announcement of the breach immediately upon its discovery, and the other viewed an announcement made two months after the breach was discovered. Consumer trust was measured before the breach, after the breach was announced, and finally, after the announcement of data protection. Findings The results suggest that companies that delay a data breach announcement are likely to suffer a larger drop in consumer trust than those that immediately disclose the data breach. The results also suggest that trust can be repaired by providing data protection. However, even after providing identity theft protection and credit monitoring, companies that fail to promptly disclose a breach have lower repaired trust than companies that promptly disclose. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on e-commerce trust by examining how a company's forthrightness in reporting a data breach impacts user trust at the time of the disclosure of the data breach and after subsequent efforts to repair trust.