A Query-Theory Perspective of Privacy Decision Making

Idris Adjerid, Sonam Samat and Alessandro Acquisti

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2016, vol. 45, issue S2, S97 - S121

Abstract: Long-standing policy approaches to privacy protection are centered on consumer notice and control and assume that privacy decision making is a deliberative process of comparison between costs and benefits from information disclosure. An emerging body of work, however, documents the powerful effects of factors unrelated to objective trade-offs in privacy settings. In this paper, we investigate how focusing on the process by which individuals make privacy choices can help explain the impact of rational and behavioral factors on privacy decision making. In an online experiment, we borrow from query-theory literature and measure individuals' considerations (that is, queries) across manipulations of rational and behavioral factors. We find that effects of rational and behavioral factors are associated with differences in the order and valence of queries considered in privacy settings. Our results confirm that understanding how differences in privacy choice emerge can help harmonize disparate perspectives on privacy decision making.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/689599 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/689599 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/689599

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Legal Studies from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().