Consumers’ Need of Privacy Protection – Experimental Results

The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 2010

The article experimentally investigates individuals' choice behavior between privacy and security. In a convenience sample of undergraduate and graduate students, we find that most individuals choose to sacrifice a moderate amount of privacy in exchange for a moderate increase in security. A nontrivial fraction of participants made more extreme choices, opting for either high security or high privacy positions. Identifiable factors influenced these choices. For example, while the high security individuals responded to losses they personally experienced in the experiment, high privacy subjects responded to losses experienced by others in the experiment.

PLOS ONE, 2023

Information about individual behaviour is collected regularly by organisations. This information has value to businesses, the government and third parties. It is not clear what value this personal data has to consumers themselves. Much of the modern economy is predicated on people sharing personal data, however if individuals value their privacy, they may choose to withhold this data unless the perceived benefits of sharing outweigh the perceived value of keeping the data private. One technique to assess how much individuals value their privacy is to ask them whether they might be willing to pay for an otherwise free service if paying allowed them to avoid sharing personal data. Our research extends previous work on factors affecting individuals' decisions about whether to share personal data. We take an experimental approach and focus on whether consumers place a positive value on protecting their data by examining their willingness to share personal data in a variety of data sharing environments. Using five evaluation techniques, we systematically investigate whether members of the public value keeping their personal data private. We show that the extent to which participants value protecting their information differs by data type, suggesting there is no simple function to assign a value for individual privacy. The majority of participants displayed remarkable consistency in their rankings of the importance of different types of data through a variety of elicitation procedures, a finding consistent with the existence of stable individual privacy preferences in protecting personal data. We discuss our findings in the context of research on the value of privacy and privacy preferences.

Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2001

The present study examines the interrelationships among antecedents and consequences of privacy concerns. The results indicate, among other things, that a consumer's attitude toward direct marketing and his/her desire for information control act as antecedents to privacy concerns. Privacy concerns, in turn, are negatively related to purchase behavior and the purchase decision process. Understanding the antecedents of privacy concerns provides a foundation for developing effective policies and practices to reduce such concerns while understanding the consequences of privacy concerns is essential to gauging just how important dealing with these concerns really are for marketers.

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2015

Consumer privacy issues continue to influence marketing practice. While protection from undue use of personal information draws significant attention, concerns related to undesired visibility of consumer activity in the shopping space has received very little. In fact any empirical measure of this is lacking, despite a growing body of literature in the realm of shopping related consumer embarrassment and practices used by consumers to privatize shopping behavior. To close this gap, this paper develops a selfreport scale to measure in-store privacy preference (ISPP), a situational variable that addresses consumer desires to avoid shopping related self-disclosure. The paper reports on data collected from over 1000 adult consumers to develop and validate a four-item measure of ISPP. The measure is shown to predict several potential outcomes related to embarrassing or uncomfortable shopping experiences. Applications for the scale's use and implications for managers are discussed.

Journal of Marketing Management, 2020

The co-option of consumers as unwilling agents in their own surveillance has enabled significant abuses of consumer privacy. Previous studies have largely used privacy concern as a proxy for overall privacy attitudes. In this study, we implement a choice experiment in combination with measures adapted from Communication Privacy Management theory to enable a broader exploration of the influences of privacy attitudes by contextualising privacy as a negotiation about accessibility over contextual boundaries. Key findings suggest individuals' social media disclosure decisions are influenced at least in part by their privacy attitudes, particularly with respect to information categories which may cue other personal information. Findings are also presented on consumers' willingness to pay for privacy, with implications for alternative revenue streams not built on consumer surveillance.

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Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007

This study evaluated users' behaviors when performing inexpensive or expensive e-commerce purchases on familiar and unfamiliar Web sites. Users were more comfortable with making inexpensive than expensive purchases. They also felt more secure and that their privacy was better protected when shopping with a familiar Web site than an unfamiliar one, especially for expensive purchases. For inexpensive purchases, if the price was "right", participants were willing to purchase the product on unfamiliar Web sites. For expensive purchases, though, the reputation of the organization hosting the Web site was the most important factor. In both cases, privacy was a minor determinant for deciding whether to make a purchase from a Web site. Only 20% of the users regularly accessed the sites' privacy policies during their interactions with the sites. Moreover, less than half of the participants even looked at privacy-policy links during their interactions with the Web sites.

2020

Consumer data help marketers in developing analytical insights in order to create targeted value propositions and individualized services. However, this is partly hampered by consumer hesitation to disclose personal information, which includes new aspects in the context of the GDPR implementation. This requires to analyse dispositional factors and mechanisms that predetermine consumer willingness to disclose personal data. The aim of this study is to assess how disposition to value privacy, online privacy concerns, privacy awareness and the perceived regulatory effectiveness influence the disclosure of personal data. The analysis and SEM modelling on the basis of survey data obtained in Lithuania showed that the analysed antecedents influence consumer willingness to disclose personal data indirectly, with mediation of disposition to value privacy. Additionally, privacy awareness mediates the influence of the perceived regulatory effectiveness on disposition to value privacy. This allowed to disclose a new mechanism among dispositional factors of privacy-linked consumer behaviour and to suggest new directions for further research.

Computers & Security, 2017

Do people really care about their privacy? Surveys show that privacy is a primary concern for citizens in the digital age. On the other hand, individuals reveal personal information for relatively small rewards, often just for drawing the attention of peers in an online social network. This inconsistency of privacy attitudes and privacy behaviour is often referred to as the "privacy paradox". In this paper, we present the results of a review of research literature on the privacy paradox. We analyze studies that provide evidence of a paradoxical dichotomy between attitudes and behaviour and studies that challenge the existence of such a phenomenon. The diverse research results are explained by the diversity in research methods, the different contexts and the different conceptualisations of the privacy paradox. We also present several interpretations of the privacy paradox, stemming from social theory, psychology, behavioural economics and, in one case, from quantum theory. We conclude that current research has improved our understanding of the privacy paradox phenomenon. It is, however, a complex phenomenon that requires extensive further research. Thus, we call for synthetic studies to be based on comprehensive theoretical models that take into account the diversity of personal information and the diversity of privacy concerns. We suggest that future studies should use evidence of actual behaviour rather than self-reported behaviour.

Internet Policy Review, 2014

The EU General Data Protection Regulation is supposed to introduce several innovations, including the right of data portability for data subjects. In this article, we review recent literature documenting experiments to assess users' valuation of personal data, with the purpose to provide policy-oriented remarks. In particular, contextual aspects, conflicts between declared and revealed preferences, as well as the suggestion that personal data is not conceivable as a single good, but instead as a bundle, are taken into account, also discussing potential shortcomings and pitfalls in the surveyed experiments. Data portability is supposed to increase consumer empowerment; still, several technological preconditions need to apply to make this right actually enforceable.

Information Systems: Behavioral & Social Methods eJournal, 2016

Personal data lie at the forefront of different business models and constitute the main source of revenue of several online companies. In many cases, consumers have incomplete information about the digital transactions of their data. This paper investigates whether highlighting positive or negative aspects of online privacy, thereby mitigating the informational problem, can affect consumers’ privacy actions and attitudes. Results of two online survey experiments indicate that participants adopt a more conservative stance on disclosing identifiable information, such as name and email, even when they are informed about positive attitudes of companies towards their privacy. On the other hand, they do not change their attitudes and social actions towards privacy. These findings suggest that privacy concerns are dormant and may manifest when consumers are asked to think about privacy; and that privacy behavior is not necessarily sensitive to exposure to objective threats or benefits of d...

An online survey conducted among participants in the US (n = 248) and Estonia (n=225) examined willingness to disclose and perceived risks pertaining to disclosing personally identifying information (PII, also referred to as personal data in Europe) in ecommerce, as well as attitude toward disclosure in general, and anxiety disclosing personal data. Additionally, the study investigated how willingness to disclose and perceived risk of disclosing personal data were affected by demographic variables, trust in the Internet and trust in institutions, the Big Five personality dimensions found in the psychology literature (neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion), and four sets of perceived shopping benefits (opportunity benefits, bargain benefits, purchase benefits, and expected privacy benefits). Despite Estonia’s advanced adoption and progressive policies and practices toward the Internet, Americans were more willing to disclose, exhibited more positive attitudes, demonstrated less anxiety, and were less concerned about perceived risks. For Estonians, ecommerce experience, perceived purchase benefits, and trust in the Internet and institutions were significant predictors of willingness to disclose personal data. Americans who perceived purchase benefits were found to be the most likely to disclose PII, while Americans with lower levels of education were also more willing to disclose. The study utilized a 17-item list of potential disclosure items (name, email address, etc.) and showed these can be categorized reliably into six sub-indices: contact information, payment information, life history information, financial/medical information, work-related information, and online account information. Further, a reliable efficient, 20-item scale was developed that can be deployed in future studies investigating the Big Five personality traits. Online disclosure consciousness (ODC) was introduced as a framework to conceptualize and empirically measure the gap between one’s willingness to disclose and perceived risk pertaining to the overall 17-item index used in the study, the sub-indices, and particular items. Using 7-point Likert-type measures, the results showed significant gaps among participants both within and across nations. A 5-scenario online disclosure consciousness model is presented to explain the tradeoffs involved in making a disclosure decision, with absolute willingness to disclose and absolute risk aversion on the two extremes and theoretical midpoint where the two competing motivations cancel themselves out. Changes in a person’s position along the continuum are posited to be influenced by marketers’ initiatives, personal experiences, and external factors. Implications for theory, consumers, marketing practice, and public policy are discussed. The findings suggest that willingness to disclose and risk aversion can and should be analyzed empirically together. Thus, the ODC model provides an alternative conceptualization to the ideas of the privacy paradox, privacy calculus, and privacy cost-benefit ratios found in the literature. Consumers have a responsibility to educate themselves about online disclosure practices and how to protect their privacy. These findings suggest marketers and policy makers should recognize that data disclosed online are not all equally sensitive to consumers. However, fostering trust, reducing risks, and promoting benefits are essential to the future of ecommerce.

The current digital marketplace maneuvered by big data lures consumers to disclose information that is private, while they express concern about revealing personal information. The privacy paradox describes the unexpected behavior of people who disclose personal information in spite of being concerned by their privacy. In this paper, we explain the privacy paradox in the data-driven digital marketplace context. We take two related but different routes to expound the privacy paradox. Firstly, using the Theory of Incomplete Information (TII) we argue that, knowledge deficiency of consumers due to incomplete information impedes them to make a rational decision. Secondly, using the Construal Level Theory (CLT) we explain how abstract and psychologically distant privacy values are disparaged over more tangible and psychologically proximal shopping benefits. Our study proposes privacy behavior is not merely an outcome of a trade-off, but a decision process that is influenced by limited knowledge and psychological distance.

2007

ABSTRACT We present an empirical study of willingness-to-pay for protecting information (we term it willingness-to-protect) and willingness-to-accept a proposal to sell information (willingness-to-accept). We conducted the study in two parts. In the first part we presented the study participants with two single closed-ended yes-no questions, asking them to protect themselves against information release for a fixed amount of money, or offering them to release their information for a fixed amount of money.