Lecture 3: Personalization, Privacy concerns and Information sharing

Question 1

Privacy as right –> privacy as a commodity

Answer 1

While privacy stays a basic human right (see: Westin) we are progressively more likely to consider it a commodity (‘grondstof’), like time (in the form of work) or money.

Question 2

Management of private information (zwick&dholakia, 2004)

Answer 2

• anonymity: sharing personal information while concealing real identity
• secrecy: sharing of little and potentially inaccurate information
• transparency: disclose large amount of personal information, accurate representation of self
• confidentiality: externalization of restricted but highly accurate information

Question 3

privacy has been studied mostly in economic terms (Smith et al., 2011), leads to …

Answer 3

the idea that before disclosing personal information, users might carefully evaluate benefits and risks.

Question 4

Privacy calculus (meaning)

Answer 4

“Individuals are assumed to behave in ways that they believe will result in the most favourable net level of outcomes” (Stone & Stone, 1990)

Question 5

Privacy calculus (benefits)

Answer 5

Sharing Benefits are generally classified as belonging to three main categories:

• Financial Rewards: e.g. discounts, earnings, time saved
• Social Benefits: e.g. gaining access to specific groups you like, are important, or are beneficial to you
• Personalization: e.g. personalized offers, validation

Question 6

Privacy calculus (risks)

Answer 6

Sharing Risks can be thought of as “the potential for loss associated with the release of private information to a firm” (Featherman & Pavlou, 2003).

• the likelihood of the risk –> the chance that information is “misused”
• the severity of the risk –> the consequences of this “misuse”

Question 7

Privacy paradox

Answer 7

In fact, when assessing users’ perception of privacy versus their privacy-protecting behavior scholars have often found the results paradoxical

Question 8

Limits of the privacy calculus

Answer 8

The privacy calculus presumes that users make
rational economic choicesat all time.
This is not true at all times:

Behavior quite often guided by “heuristics”
- Social proof
- Persuasive techniques by platforms
- “foot in the door”
- “door in the face”
- Affect heuristics
- “Framing” effects
Or, privacy fatigue

Question 9

Theory of planned behavior

Answer 9

Question 10

Privacy fatigue (definition)

Answer 10

“a sense of weariness toward privacy issues, in which individuals believe that there is no effective means of managing their personal information on the Internet”

Question 11

privacy fatigue is primarily generated from:

Answer 11

• high demands and an inability to meet goals

Question 12

privacy fatigue is a …

Answer 12

strategy of behavioral disengagement:
when trying to achieve a goal, fatigued individuals will disengage, rather than trying to solve the problem

Question 13

privacy fatigue in relation to cynicism and emotional exhaustion

Answer 13