Fair Information Practices

Dissertation review: An investigation of fair information practices on American websites

Student: John Forrest Harrell
Dissertation Committee: Lorne Olfman, Chair; Terry Ryan, Member; Art Denzau, Member Year: 2006

Do privacy policies impact people’s perception of information risk when using web-based e-commerce shops? The authors wanted to study the impact of perceived information risk on web user’s level of trust with the website, and their subsequent intent to purchase from that online shop. Other  factors   they  studied  included  overall  user  experience,  consumer’s  history  with the website, and the firm’s reputation.

The team gathered data by first asking participants to select a website from a list, evaluate the site’s user experience and then to read the site’s privacy policy. After completing these steps, participants were then routed to an online questionnaire. Different levels of Likert scales were  used  to  evaluate   variables  including  attitude,  effect  of  prior  experience  with a website, and reputation of the website and its owner. The team conducted two pilot studies, which allowed them to revise survey questions and scales based on issue they encountered during pilot analysis.

Multiple regression analysis and simple regression analysis were used to study the relationships for each step in the process: Information Risk, Trust and Intent.

Census data was used to  ascertain the size of the Internet population. Survey responses were eliminated if the respondent was not at least 30 years of age or a college graduate or an American resident. The final number of completed surveys that were used for calculation totaled 314.

Two areas that struck me as noteworthy and possible areas for concern: requiring respondents to read the privacy policy before completing the survey, and the number of respondents (N = 314). In the consumer web space, studies of online consumer behavior conducted by trusted sources like MMRA or Pew Internet typically number in the thousands. A recent study from Pew Internet titled Cell Phone Activities 2012 based their analysis on responses from 3,014 American adults. The exclusion criteria were fairly narrow: survey respondents had to be American and 18 years of age or older.

Even though this was a survey of cell phone activity, not having a cell phone did not exclude one from participation (433 of the 3,014 respondents indicated that they did not own a cell phone). Without this large sample size, made possible in part by a low number of exclusions, it is often difficult for report consumers, typically media agencies and marketing departments, to have confidence in utilizing the results for predictive modeling of consumer behavior.

Also, while knowledge of the privacy policy is a plausible criteria for this study based on the author’s intent, my question would be if this was intended to be a study of an ideal state, or a study of real world behaviors? In the real world, Internet users make value judgments about the trustworthiness of a website and its owner without ever reading the privacy policy. For example, even though Facebook has over one billion monthly active users, with 600 million monthly active users accessing Facebook on mobile devices, many are unaware of the Facebook privacy policy. 

As a case in point, a viral hoax has been circulating around Facebook urging users to post a lengthy block of legalese to their timeline or wall. This alleged legal copy is purported to protect the intellectual property and privacy of the user’s Facebook posts. This hoax holds no legal value since the Facebook privacy  policy  would supersede such a posting. However, the viral nature of this hoax demonstrates that users, in reality, are not aware of Facebook’s privacy policy but have assigned a high level of trust, and subsequently a high level of intent, to Facebook sites, mobile apps, and the company itself.

Article References

Blue, V. (2012). Facebook privacy notice: Fake. ZDNet. Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/facebook-privacy-notice-fake/1370

Duggan, M., & Rainie, L. (2012). Cell Phone Activities 2012. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Cell‐Activities.aspx

Facebook, Inc. (2012). Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2012 Results. Retrieved from http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=715607

Harrell, J. F. (2006). An investigation of fair information practices on American websites. Claremont Graduate University SISAT Dissertation. Retireved from  http://libraries.claremont.edu/