The Roles of Customer Engagement, Self-Efficacy, and Sensitivity to Privacy in Driving Customer Value in Digitalizing Services: A Moderated-Mediation Model

Abstract

While customer engagement and self-efficacy in perceiving customer value have been scantily addressed, the interaction of sensitivity to privacy in digitalizing services remains underexplored. The study depends on self-determination and social exchange theories and examines a moderated-mediation research model using survey data from 326 consumers across China. The results show that the measurement and structural models of customer engagement have a positive and statistically significant relationship with self-efficacy and perceived customer value in adopting service digitalization behaviors. The findings also confirm the conditional mediating role of consumers’ self-efficacy between customer engagement and customer value. Using the moderated analysis, consumers’ sensitivity to privacy significantly dampens the links between customer engagement and self-efficacy (perceived customer value). It further suggested implications for theory, practices, and some limitations to step up the research scope in service digitalization.