Abstract

As digital interactions increasingly dominate daily life, individuals are regularly faced with complex decisions about their online privacy, such as accepting cookies, sharing personal data, or adjusting security settings. This presents ongoing privacy risks, including the collection of personal information without informed consent, sharing data with third parties, and the use of data for unauthorized purposes, (Ginosar & Ariel, 2017). Despite heightened awareness and concern about data privacy, many users continue to engage in risky behaviors, a phenomenon known as the privacy paradox. The complexity of privacy decisions in realistic scenarios may make it difficult for consumers to disentangle potentially contributing to this paradox, (Buckman et al., 2019). In response to these persistent challenges, individuals may develop privacy fatigue, (Wang et al., 2025). This study therefore investigates privacy fatigue, a psychological state of emotional exhaustion and resignation resulting from the persistent demands of managing online privacy. Drawing on Folkman and Lazarus’s Coping Theory, this research examines how privacy-related stressors trigger cognitive appraisals and coping behaviors that ultimately shape users' intention to protect their personal information.

The study will adopt a cross-sectional design, collecting data from approximately 400 individuals who actively engage in digital environments. The findings hope to demonstrate that privacy fatigue significantly weakens users' motivation to adopt protective behaviors, with problem-focused coping reducing fatigue and increasing intention to protect and emotion-focused coping exacerbating it. These results will offer an understanding of how users' coping strategies form the relationship between privacy stressors and protective behaviors

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