Wait, Is This Dangerous For Me? Consumers’ Reactions to Data Breaches That Pose (No) Risk to Them

Data breaches lead to various negative reactions by consumers. However, prior research often is not explicit about if and how the studied consumers are affected by the data breach. For example, social media studies generally investigate the general sentiment by a large population of consumers, many of whom may not have a relationship with the breached company or be at risk from the breach, whereas compensation studies often investigate reactions by people who could be breached personally and thus face a risk from the breach. This study elaborates on the differences between these groups and uses a scenario-based pilot experiment (n=95) to differentiate reactions by consumers to a risky breach that could personally affect them from those to a non-risky breach that could not. We also provide a benchmark to establish the effect of hearing about a data breach compared against a clean control group.