Understanding the Influence of Data Breaches on Patients’ Willingness to Share Protected Health Information: A Mixed Methods Study of a Construals Privacy Calculus Perspective

Abstract

Patients are increasingly faced with balancing the efficacy of their care against the privacy of their protected health information (PHI). Research has established that healthcare data breaches erode patients’ willingness to share new health information, yet withholding PHI results in poorer medical outcomes. This study integrates construal level theory and privacy calculus to introduce a construals privacy calculus perspective of PHI sharing post-data breach. This perspective argues that contextual differences in breach characteristics affect patients’ perceived PHI risks and disclosure decisions. Results of a mixed-methods research design indicate that psychologically distant breaches are significantly less disruptive to disclosure intentions than psychologically closer data breaches. Perceived PHI sensitivity also serves as a model moderator based on qualitative interview data and a meta-inference post hoc analysis of our quantitative study. Overall, this study contributes to understanding PHI disclosure amidst increasing incidents of healthcare data breaches, where PHI disclosures and healthcare privacy are context- and situation-specific phenomena.