Transparency in the Privacy Context: A Structured Literature Review

Transparency features, such as privacy policies and privacy seals, frequently offer users information about an online service’s collection and handling of personal data. While transparency is a heavily studied topic in the privacy context, the findings are equivocal, due to mixed results on the effects of transparency and heterogeneous conceptualizations of the term transparency. This is worrisome as transparency is widely recognized as a key instrument to empower users and guide their decisions, making the effects of transparency of fundamental importance for regulators, online service providers, and users. To address missing conceptual clarity and differing effects of transparency, we conducted a structured literature review on transparency in the privacy context. We extract three distinct conceptualizations of transparency and two subdimensions of privacy information, which impact user decisions. We provide a research agenda for future studies, investigating the effects of transparency in the privacy context

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

The Shorter the Better? Effects of Privacy Policy Length on Online Privacy Decision-Making

Privacy policies provide Internet users with the possibility to inform themselves about websites’ usage of their disclosed personal data. Strikingly, however, most people tend not to read privacy policies because they are long and cumbersome, indicating that people do not wish to expend much (cognitive) effort on reading such policies. The present study aimed to examine whether shorter privacy policies can be beneficial in informing users about a social networking site’s (SNS) privacy practices, and to investigate associations between variables relevant for privacy decision-making using one theory-based integrative model. In an online experiment, participants (N = 305) were asked to create a personal account on an SNS after being given the option to read the privacy policy. Privacy policy length and the SNS’s level of privacy were varied, creating a 2 (policy length) x 2 (level of privacy) between-subjects design. The results revealed that participants who saw short policies spent less time on reading but gained higher knowledge about the SNS’s privacy practices - due to the fact that they spent more reading time per word. Factual privacy policy knowledge was found to be an indicator for participants’ subjective privacy perception. The perception and evaluation of the specific SNS´s privacy level influenced the assessment of privacy costs and benefits. Particularly when benefits were perceived as high, self-disclosure was increased

The Importance of Transparency and Willingness to Share Personal Information

This study investigates the extent to which individuals are willing to share their sensitive personal information with companies. The study examines whether skepticism can influence willingness to share information. Additionally, it seeks to determine whether transparency can moderate the relationship between skepticism and willingness to share and whether 1) companies perceived motives, 2) individual’s prior privacy violations, 3) individuals’ propensity to take risks, and 4) individuals self-efficacy act as antecedents of skepticism. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression is used to examine the relationships between all the factors. The findings indicate that skepticism does have a negative impact on willingness to share personal information and that transparency can reduce skepticis

Adoption of Digital Allergy Card: A Mixed-Methods Approach

Due to the recent growth in the number of Personal Health Records (PHR) as well as the necessity for the development of digital solutions for reliable and accurate documentation of drug allergies, there is a need to explore digital solution as a Digital Allergy Card (DAC). Despite the advantage of using DAC, there are obstacles to taking this solution. While several studies raised privacy concerns as the key barrier to DAC adoption, there is no clear understanding of the variability of these concerns in relation to other factors which may overcome them. Therefore, drawing on situational privacy calculus theory, we propose a mixed-methods approach to assess the trade-off between perceived benefits and privacy concerns in different situations regarding DAC use. This study will provide insights to both academics and practitioners on PHR adoption by the identification of contextual determinants which can influence the adoption of a DAC

Does privacy mean different things to different people: Can that explain privacy paradox?

Privacy is considered a fundamental inalienable right in most western democracies, and yet the understanding of privacy varies considerably among people. Research shows that people exhibit several paradoxical privacy behaviors. We contend that some of these paradoxical behaviors are related to privacy literacy. In this research we define privacy literacy and present scales to measure this literacy. We then associate the paradoxical behaviors with privacy literacy. We also contend that temporal discounting plays a significant role in some paradoxical behaviors because some individuals place a high value on short-term rewards which cause them to behave in ways that may be counter to their longterm intentions. Our overarching research goal is to understand the motives (e.g. tangible rewards, curiosity, fame etc.) that lead users to voluntarily disclose their private information

Are 21st-century citizens grieving for their loss of privacy?

Although much research exists that examines cognitive events leading up to information disclosure, such as risk-benefit analysis and state-based and trait-based attributes, minimal research exists that examines user responses after a direct or indirect breach of privacy. The present study examines 1,004 consumer responses to two different high-profile privacy breaches using sentiment analysis. Our findings indicate that individuals who experience an actual or surrogate privacy breach exhibit similar emotional responses, and that the pattern of responses resembles well-known reactions to other losses. Specifically, we present evidence that users contemplating evidence of a privacy invasion experience and communicate very similar responses as individuals who have lost loved ones, gone through a divorce or who face impending death because of a terminal illness. These responses parallel behavior associated with the Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief

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

The mediating role of perceived risks and benefits when self-disclosing:a study of social media trust and FoMO

Self-disclosure as influenced by perceived risks and benefits plays an important role within the context of social media use and the associated privacy risk. Some social media platforms, like Facebook (now part of Meta Platforms Inc.), provide users with elaborate means to control privacy risk. Conversely, Instagram (also part of Meta) provides users with fewer such mechanisms as a function of self-disclosure. Therefore, self-disclosure as a product of risk and benefit assessment may differ considerably as a function of the technological affordances that control such disclosure. This is particularly the case considering that such a benefit and risk assessment is further influenced by a user's trust in that provider, not to mention their proclivity for disclosing without any rational risk and benefit assessments, as is the case when disclosing as a function of fear of missing out (FoMO). Given the influence that provider trust and FoMO might have when assessing risks and benefits, this study evaluated the extent to which perceived risks and benefits mediate self-disclosure on Facebook and Instagram, in particular within the context of provider trust and FoMO. Based on an adapted version of privacy calculus, we evaluated our research model by analyzing 720 survey responses using partial least squares path modeling. Our results indicate that perceived benefits mediate the relationship between FoMO and intention to self-disclose when using Instagram, but not when using Facebook. Additionally, we found perceived benefits and perceived risks to mediate the relationship between trust in provider and intention to self-disclose for Facebook and Instagram. Surprisingly, we found no evidence to suggest that the relationship between FoMO and intention to self-disclose is mediated by perceived risks when using Facebook, with the converse being true when using Instagram. We conclude that the transitory (ephemeral) nature of some methods of self-disclosure on Instagram are used as a means to mitigate privacy risks.</p