Does the type of privacy-protective behaviour matter? An analysis of online privacy protective action and motivation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Individual decisions to protect privacy online are complex. Most research has treated privacy protection measures as a single, unitary category. This paper challenges this notion by looking at multiple categories of privacy protection behaviour. Our data are from the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) as well as insights from the semi-structured interviews. We find two types of privacy protective actions, which we call security actions and preventive actions. We use logistic regression, based on protection motivation theory, to investigate what leads people to take either type of action. The contribution of this research is three-fold. First, it shows that individual privacy protection cannot be treated as a single category. Second, it demonstrates that there are different motivations underlying different privacy protection actions. Finally, it proposes an expansion of protection motivation theory to include a contextual aspect based on Nissenbaum (2009, Privacy in context. Stanford University Press). This expansion considers the privacy context defined by actor, activity, values and norms. We suggest that future work on privacy should consider multiple categories and contextual settings.