Educating Students’ Privacy Decision Making through Information Ethics Curriculum

Cathy S Lin

doi:10.4236/ce.2016.71017

Abstract

Increasingly sophisticated technologies nowadays have equipped powerful capabilities to obtain and exploit consumers’ information privacy on the Internet. The contemporary privacy protection techniques seem fail to guard information privacy. Besides of the technological protections, information ethics education is described as the ideal way to increase people’s consciousness. This study proposes a privacy decision making model which posits that attitudes toward privacy protection, privacy self-efficacy for protection, and privacy self-efficacy for non-acquisition are critical factors essential to behavioral intention. Further, a longitudinal model explores whether information ethics education plays a role in influencing students’ concepts of protecting information privacy. A survey of 111 senior-level undergraduate students in the department of Information Management was conducted to test the hypothesized model. The findings exhibit important insights: through information ethics education, students demonstrate significant model paths changes in the relationships of attitude, privacy self-efficacy for protection, and privacy self-efficacy for non-acquisition to intention. The implications to the ethics curriculum concerning information privacy are discussed.

Highlights

The rapidly technological developments have enhanced our life, which brings much convenience and efficiency to data collection, and data processing to generate data value proliferation
As the amount of businesses and individuals information continue to grow and the access to that information by IT personnel increases, ethics cognition and value judgments by IT professionals becomes more important. For those students who major in information systems, an obligation to understand the responsibility that goes with their IS profession is imperative
Results from the study shed light on interesting or subtle differences in information ethics education. It is a semester long information ethics course that helps IS students strengthening the relationships between attitudes, two kinds of privacy self-efficacy and privacy intention

Summary

Introduction

The rapidly technological developments have enhanced our life, which brings much convenience and efficiency to data collection, and data processing to generate data value proliferation. Lin become more powerful and sophisticated, the issue of privacy has surfaced to become one of the most critical concerns. The privacy loss in the information age is significant, confirmed by the United States’ President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report about “Big Data and Privacy”: “big data analytics have the potential to eclipse long-standing civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace” (House, 2014)

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Conclusion