An Empirical Investigation of Internet Privacy: Customer Behaviour, Companies’ Privacy Policy Disclosures, and a Gap

Privacy emerges as a critical issue in an e-commerce environment because of a fundamental tension among corporate, consumer, and government interests. By reviewing prior Internet-privacy research in the fields of information systems, business, and marketing published between 1995 and 2006, we consider the following research questions: 1) how an individual’s privacy behaviour is affected by privacy policy disclosures and by the level of the individual’s involvement regarding the sensitivity of personal information; 2) how companies’ privacy policies vary with respect to regulatory approaches and cultural values; and 3) whether there is a gap between the privacy practices valued by individuals and those emphasized by companies. A three-stage study is conducted to answer these questions. The first two stages, consisting of a Web-based survey and an online ordering experiment with 210 participants, found that individuals are more likely to read the privacy policy statements posted on Web sites and less likely to provide personal information, when they are under a high privacy involved situation as compared to being in a low privacy involved situation. However, the existence of a privacy seal did not affect individuals’ behaviour, regardless of involvement conditions. This study also found a gap between self-reported privacy behaviour and actual privacy behaviour. When individuals were requested to provide personal information, their privacy policy statement reading behaviour was close to their self-report behaviour. However, their personal information providing behaviour was different from their self-reported behaviour. The third stage, which entailed the study of 420 privacy policies spanning six countries and two industries, showed that privacy policies vary across countries, as well as with varying governmental involvement and cultural values in those countries. Finally, the analysis of all the three stages revealed a gap between individuals’ importance ratings of companies’ privacy practices and policies that companies emphasize in their privacy disclosures

Erratum to: Comparison of the Z/γ* + jets to γ + jets cross sections in pp collisions at √s = 8

Erratum to: JHEP10(2015)128. ArXiv ePrint: 1505.06520. The online version of the original article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2015)128

Computer-Assisted Functions for Auditing XBRL-Related Documents

The increasing global adoption of XBRL and its potential to replace traditional formats for business reporting raise questions about the quality of XBRL-tagged information. In this paper, we identify a set of issues and audit objectives that auditors might confront if they are asked to provide assurance procedures on the XBRL-related documents. We also address useful computer-assisted audit functions for supporting various audit tasks on XBRL instance documents and extension taxonomies and discuss how the identified audit objectives could be accomplished using these functions

Are Commercial Financial Databases Reliable? New Evidence from Korea

The quality of financial information is crucial for the effective decision-making of practitioners and academics. A number of studies have shown the existence of errors in proprietary databases provided by financial data aggregators (e.g., Compustat and Value Line) in advanced markets like the U.S. However, no study has examined the quality of the financial data offered by aggregators in emerging markets. Research on such markets is needed as financial investment frequently occurs in emerging markets due to the globalization of capital. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by investigating whether financial data provided by aggregators is the same as the data reported in firms’ financial statements in emerging markets. Another purpose of this study is to examine the impact on academic research. Comparing the 18 most widely-used financial items found in the original filings of firms with the corresponding data provided by all three data aggregators currently available in South Korea (i.e., DataGuide, KisValue, and TS2000), we found a considerable number of differences; many of the differences are substantially greater than conventional materiality. We also found that the differences between data sources lead to different prediction results in bankruptcy prediction model

Classifying the contents of cybersecurity risk disclosure through textual analysis and factor analysis

Cybersecurity has garnered much attention due to the increasing frequency and cost of cybersecurity incidents and has become a significant concern for organizations and governments. Regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have also shown an interest in cybersecurity and the quality of cybersecurity risk disclosures. This paper examines the informativeness of cybersecurity risk disclosures when cybersecurity incidents or related internal control weaknesses are reported. In particular, we propose a quantitative methodology, which is a combination of textual analysis and factor analysis, for classifying cybersecurity risk disclosures into nine factors. Our results show different disclosing patterns among firms depending on whether they had cybersecurity incidents and internal control weaknesses. Further, our analysis indicates that firms disclose control-related factors to mediate the negative effect of disclosing vulnerability-related factors. This study provides various stakeholders, including investors, regulators, and researchers, with insight into the informativeness of cybersecurity risk disclosures

The Effect of Mandatory XBRL Reporting across the Financial Information Environment: Evidence in the First Wave of Mandated U.S. Filers

This study examines the effect of mandatory XBRL disclosure across various aspects of the financial information environment. Our findings show an increase in information efficiency, a decrease in event return volatility, and a reduction of change in stock returns volatility for 428 firms (1,536 10-K and 10-Q filings) post-XBRL disclosure. In addition, this study shows that XBRL mitigates information risk in the market, especially when there is increased uncertainty in the information environment. Our results are robust to various alternative specifications and research modifications such as a matched-pair control (326 XBRL versus 326 non-XBRL firms), current stock market condition, potential earnings releases, and corporate governance. This study contributes to the literature by systematically documenting evidence of how mandatory XBRL disclosure decreases information risk and information asymmetry in both general and uncertain information environments. Our evidence could potentially assist the SEC in their effort to expeditiously assess the benefits of XBRL