Factors Affecting Students' Privacy Paradox and Privacy Protection Behavior

Maor Weinberger, Dan Bouhnik, Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations
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Abstract

In this exploratory study, we investigate the factors affecting two opposite types of online privacy behavior: 1) online privacy paradox, i.e. a mismatch between users' online privacy attitudes and their online privacy behavior; and 2) online privacy protection. To assess these two types of behavior, we devised a new direct scale comprising 25 items explicitly highlighting benefits and risks of the examined behavior. Various factors related to online privacy and anonymity were considered in light of the existing theories on online privacy behavior. To this end, 169 students from different fields of study in Israeli academia were administered closed-ended questionnaires. The multivariate linear regression analysis showed that information science students had a significantly lower tendency toward privacy paradox behavior compared to other students. In addition, we found that as the participants' privacy concern and online privacy self efficacy increase, their tendency toward privacy paradox behavior decreases. However, surprisingly, there was no significant association between privacy protection behavior and high technical skills or online privacy literacy. This research has social implications for academia and the general public, as it shows that the protection of online privacy does not depend on technical knowledge or complicated tool usage, but rather can be achieved by raising users' online privacy concern and self-efficacy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3-20
Number of pages18
JournalOpen Information Science
Volume1
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 27 Jun 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Marta Rȩpalska, published by Sciendo 2018.

Keywords

  • online privacy
  • online privacy literacy
  • online privacy self efficacy
  • privacy concern
  • privacy paradox

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