Achieving a Balance Between Privacy Protection and Data Collection: A Field Experimental Examination of a Theory-Driven Information Technology Solution

Bailing Liu (), Paul A. Pavlou () and Xiufeng Cheng ()
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Bailing Liu: School of Information Management, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430000, China
Paul A. Pavlou: C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204
Xiufeng Cheng: School of Information Management, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China

Information Systems Research, 2022, vol. 33, issue 1, 203-223

Abstract: Companies face a trade-off between creating stronger privacy protection policies for consumers and employing more sophisticated data collection methods. Justice-driven privacy protection outlines a method to manage this trade-off. We built on the theoretical lens of justice theory to integrate justice provision with key privacy protection features and conceptualized the extent to which these features affect privacy concerns and information disclosure behavior. Notably, we proposed an information technology (IT) solution to balance the trade-off between privacy protection and consumer data collection. In the context of mobile banking applications, we prototyped a theory-driven IT solution, referred to as negotiation , active - recommendation privacy policy application, which enables customer service agents to interact with and actively recommend personalized privacy policies to consumers. We benchmarked our solution through a field experiment relative to two conventional applications: a non-negotiation privacy policy application (only a nonnegotiable privacy statement is posted) as a base method and a negotiation , non-active-recommendation privacy policy application (only a negotiation feature is integrated with the privacy policy). The results showed that the proposed negotiation , active - recommendation privacy policy application decreased privacy concerns and increased consumers’ information disclosure intentions and actual disclosure behavior. A post hoc analysis corroborated these findings, indicating that our design enhanced perceived procedural justice, interactional justice, and distributive justice among consumers and made them feel comfortable to disclose their personal information. Likewise, companies would be able to collect additional personal information from consumers, thereby contributing to a privacy-friendly environment. We discuss contributions and the implications of our proposed IT solution for consumers, companies, developers, and public policy officials.

Keywords: electronic commerce; mobile commerce; privacy protection; privacy policy; justice theory; privacy concerns; information disclosure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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