Essays on Privacy Perceptions and Privacy Behaviors of Online Shoppers

Information privacy in e-commerce is tied to concrete situations of information exchange. Current studies on information privacy in e-commerce primarily focus on the impact of privacy concern as a general personal trait, ignoring the potential influence of various situational factors such as emotions, Web site design, and information requested, among others. This dissertation investigates the impacts of such situation-specific factors on online shoppers' privacy perceptions and privacy behaviors when they are interacting with unfamiliar Web sites. These impacts are viewed through two different lenses; an affect-based lens and a cognition-based lens.The results of this dissertation suggest that situational factors are more important than general privacy concern in shaping salient privacy beliefs and privacy decisions when consumers are immersed in interactions with Web sites. Specifically, we found that initial emotions formed based on overall Web site impression have a lasting coloring effect on later stage cognitive processing of information exchange. During information exchange, online shoppers conduct a cost-benefit tradeoff analysis. The information disclosure is found to be the result of competing influences of exchange benefits and two types of privacy beliefs (privacy protection belief and privacy risk belief). The attractiveness of the products or services, together with high privacy protection belief could override the influence of privacy risks and result in high behavioral intention to disclose personal information. Additionally, the cost-benefit tradeoff analysis is further adjusted by the exchange fairness. Fairness-based levers (relevance of information collected and privacy policy) could enhance privacy protection belief and reduce privacy risk belief. The effect of monetary awards is also dependent upon the exchange fairness (relevance of information collected), which could undermine information disclosure when information collected has low relevance to the purpose of the transaction. Future studies on information privacy may need to consider these situation-specific factors. Social contract theory provides a useful theoretical foundation to study information disclosure in the conventional e-commerce marketplace.Department of Management Science & Information Systems (PhD

Extending the generalizability and pragmatic contributions to solve privacy paradox

Privacy issue has increasingly become an integral part of organizations and businesses that operate within the digital era. However, heretofore, there is a lack of a systematic literature review to help scholars to integrate what has been done in previous studies when privacy issues were addressed especially the privacy paradox that still perplexes both academia and practitioners alike. Furthermore, with the inconsistency of findings regarding the privacy paradox, there is also a need to support researchers in recognizing the substantial constructs to improve the results of their empirical papers. Therefore, this paper aims to serve as an integrated review to congregate constructs that can help scholars to improve the generalizability and pragmatic contributions when addressing privacy paradox issue. Besides the conclusion that there is a lack of empirical papers on privacy paradox published in the business, management and marketing journal publications, we also synthesize constructs such as the population of the study, methodology, cross-cultural aspect and context of the study to improve the extent of the generalizability and practical contributions of empirical paper related to the privacy paradox. The limitations and implications of this study are also discussed at the end of this paper

SOCIAL COMMERCE: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF ARGUMENT STRENGTH AND SOURCE DYNAMISM OF EWOM

Due to the increasing popularity of social media, social commerce has been emerging as a new form of e-commerce. As a driving force of the popularity and growth of social commerce, electronic wordof-mouth (eWOM) plays an important role during the process of consumers’ purchase decision making in social commerce. There are adequate studies that have offered a broad view on what makes the helpfulness perception of eWOM. However, little research has investigated the effect of argument strength and source dynamism of eWOM. Drawing on Stimulus–Organism–Response (S–O–R) model and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), an integrated research model is proposed and tries to explore the impact of argument strength and source dynamism of eWOM on consumers’ affective response and cognitive response and how do they affect the formation of consumers’ purchasing intention. We expect that our study can make a contribution to theoretical development and provide some guidance for retailers to carry out a better management strategy of eWOM

The Dark Side of Privacy Nudging – An Experimental Study in the Context of a Digital Work Environment

In digital environments, individuals tend to share disproportionally more information than in face-to-face communication. Critically, disclosing personal information can yield risks such as unwanted monitoring or discrimination. Privacy nudging is a promising approach to get users to disclose less personal information. In this work, we tested two nudges corresponding to the issue of personal privacy. A framing nudge conveys an intensive message and a social nudge provides social cues. To empirically test these nudges, we evaluated an experiment with 223 participants. The results indicate that privacy nudges negatively influence information disclosure behavior. The social nudge was perceived as a threat. The framing nudge directly affected negative emotions and the social nudge indirectly. Perceived threat and negative emotions have a significant negative effect on information disclosure intention. With this research, we contribute to the discussion of what drives privacy nudge effectiveness and influences information disclosure behavior in digital work environments

Understanding the Role of Equity in Leveraging Privacy Concerns of Consumers in Ecommerce

Our research aim is to investigate the reasoning behind individuals’ use of ecommerce despite claiming concerns for their information privacy. We argue that consumers undergo a calculation of equal benefits in conducting business with online firms, where they agree to firms utilizing their personal information as long as they retain control over its usage. The equity theory is used as the theoretical basis of our study. We expect that our paper would provide better understanding of the conditions in which individuals disclose or withhold personal information

Initial trust and willingness to share personal information: The role of perceived reputation and website appeal

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Marketing IntelligenceThe Internet has been dramatically changing the shopping industry and the possibilities for gathering consumers’ personal information. The present study addresses a research gap in the e-commerce literature about the relationship between initial trust and willingness to share personal and financial information with a specific e-vendor. The study proposes a conceptual model incorporating perceived reputation, website appeal, and perceived privacy risk as relevant antecedents of trusting beliefs and intentions. Data from 244 participants provide support for most of the hypotheses suggested. Overall, results show that high levels of trusting beliefs, perceived reputation, and website appeal increase consumers’ willingness to share personal and financial information, contrary to perceived privacy risk, which has the opposite effect. Additionally, perceived reputation proved to be an important antecedent of trusting beliefs. This study supplements past studies regarding consumer behavior in an online shopping context by showing the relevance of considering both perceived reputation and website appeal to increase the likability in collecting consumers’ data. Theoretical and practical implications, the study’s limitations, and suggestions for future research are also presented. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are discussed

Understanding the role of equity in leveraging privacy concerns of consumers in ecommerce

Since ecommerce requires individuals to disclose their personal information, an issue of information privacy becomes an impediment towards its adoption. However, a paradox exists whereby individuals claim privacy concerns, yet act contrarily by using ecommerce. Our research aims to investigate the reasoning behind individuals use of ecommerce, despite claiming concerns for their information privacy. Based on previous findings, we argue that consumers undergo a calculation of equal benefits in conducting business with online firms, where they agree to firms utilizing their personal information as long as they retain control over its usage. This paper is a research-in-progress, and as such, our future work would be to validate our argument by collecting and empirically analyzing individuals responses with regards to ecommerce use. We expect that our paper would contribute by better understanding the conditions in which individuals disclose or withhold personal information

The Impacts of Privacy Rules on Users' Perception on Internet of Things (IoT) Applications: Focusing on Smart Home Security Service

Department of Management EngineeringAs communication and information technologies advance, the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way people live. In particular, as smart home security services have been widely commercialized, it is necessary to examine consumer perception. However, there is little research that explains the general perception of IoT and smart home services. This article will utilize communication privacy management theory and privacy calculus theory to investigate how options to protect privacy affect how users perceive benefits and costs and how those perceptions affect individuals??? intentions to use of smart home service. Scenario-based experiments were conducted, and perceived benefits and costs were treated as formative second-order constructs. The results of PLS analysis in the study showed that smart home options to protect privacy decreased perceived benefits and increased perceived costs. In addition, the perceived benefits and perceived costs significantly affected the intention to use smart home security services. This research contributes to the field of IoT and smart home research and gives practitioners notable guidelines.ope

Thinking Styles and Privacy Decisions: Need for Cognition, Faith into Intuition, and the Privacy Calculus

Investigating cognitive processes that underlie privacy-related decisions, prior research has primarily adopted a privacy calculus view, indicating privacy-related decisions to constitute rational anticipations of risks and benefits connected to data disclosure. Referring to psychological limitations and heuristic thinking, however, recent research has discussed notions of bounded rationality in this context. Adopting this view, the current research argues that privacy decisions are guided by thinking styles, i.e. individual preferences to decide in an either rational or intuitive way. Results of a survey indicated that individuals high in rational thinking, as reflected by a high need for cognition, anticipated and weighed risk and benefits more thoroughly. In contrast, individuals relying on experiential thinking (as reflected by a high faith into intuition) overleaped rational considerations and relied on their hunches rather than a privacy calculus when assessing intentions to disclose information. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed