Despite mobile applications being at the frontier of mobile computation technologies, security issues pose a threat to their adoption and diffusion. Recent studies suggest that security violations could be mitigated through improved security behaviors and attitudes, not just through better technologies. Existing literature on behavioral security suggests that one of the main predictors of users’ perceptions of security is their perceived privacy concerns. Using communication privacy management theory (CPM), this study examines the effects of privacyrelated perceptions, such as privacy risk and the effectiveness of privacy policies, on the security perceptions of mobile app users. To empirically test the proposed theoretical model, two survey studies were conducted using mobile apps requesting less sensitive information (n = 487) and more sensitive information (n = 559). The findings show that the perceived privacy risk negatively influences the perceived security of the mobile apps; the perceived effectiveness of a privacy policy positively influences user perceptions of mobile app security; and perceived privacy awareness moderates the effect of perceived privacy risk on the perceived security of mobile apps. The results also suggest that users have different privacy-security perceptions based on the information sensitivity of the mobile apps. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction

Mobile apps have become an inherent part of everyday life. They have dominated individuals’ digital habits due to the progress of mobile technologies, mobile access to high-speed internet, and the interactivity of mobile phone interfaces. From communicating to entertaining, mobile apps provide a variety of useful features that cause individuals to spend a great amount of time on their use (Reychav et al., 2019). A recent study demonstrated that individuals in the US spend an average of three and a half hours per day on mobile devices, with mobile apps comprising 90 % of internet time on smartphones and 77 % on tablets (Wurmser, 2018). As a result, a plethora of mobile apps are released into app marketplaces every day, to respond to demands for online shopping, games, finance management, and other tasks that users can complete with their mobile devices (Balapour, Reychav, Sabherwal, & Azuri, 2019; Balapour and Sabherwal, 2017). One report suggests that an average of 6140 mobile apps were released through the Google Play Store every day from the third quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2018 (Statista, 2018). However, despite these high numbers, most individuals in the US are hesitant to download mobile apps, with the number of downloads at an average of zero per month (Perez, 2017).