Experimental Privacy Studies - An Initial Review of the Literature

Abstract

While information technology has been advancing rapidly during the past years, the dawn of the information age has not only elevated the importance of privacy in theory and practice but also raised concerns about how to protect a users’ private information. Within the information systems literature, there exist multiple approaches for studying online privacy, but many of them do not focus on actual user behavior. The following literature review aims for synthesizing the findings of recent behavioral experiments in the field of information privacy. Relevant topics and milestones from previous studies are likewise identified and included. In particular, the review contributes to the analysis of determinants to self-disclosure and summarizes the findings on the attempts to comprehend the privacy paradox and privacy calculus.