Internet users’ perceptions of information sensitivity – insights from Germany

Eva-Maria Schomakers, Chantal Lidynia, Dirk Müllmann and Martina Ziefle

International Journal of Information Management, 2019, vol. 46, issue C, 142-150

Abstract: With the ever-increasing collection of user data, online privacy becomes an urgent matter for users and research across borders. The perception of information sensitivity is central to privacy attitudes and behaviors in different usage contexts. In an online questionnaire, n = 592 German internet users evaluated how sensitive they perceive 40 different data types. The German sensitivity evaluations revealed in this study are compared to results from the US and Brazil (Markos et al., 2017), in order to understand the cultural impact on evaluations. Additionally, we analyze how attitudes and demographic characteristics of the German sample influence the perception of sensitivity on an individual level. Some distinct differences in sensitivity perception between Germany, Brazil, and the US can be observed, but the rank orders of sensitivity of data types is very similar between the countries, indicating that there is a consensus on what constitutes sensitivity across nations. On an individual level, disposition to value privacy, risk propensity, and education level influence the perception of sensitivity. The findings contribute to an understanding of how to design information and communication strategies to inform internet users how to manage their data carefully.

Keywords: Information privacy; Perceived sensitivity; Empirical study; Cultural comparison; Privacy attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401218307692
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:46:y:2019:i:c:p:142-150

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.11.018

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Management is currently edited by Yogesh K. Dwivedi

More articles in International Journal of Information Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().