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Contextualized Communication of Privacy Practices and Personalization Benefits: Impacts on Users’ Data Sharing and Purchase Behavior

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Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 3424))

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Abstract

Consumer surveys demonstrated that privacy statements on the web are ineffective in alleviating users’ privacy concerns. We propose a new user interface design approach in which the privacy practices of a website are explicated in a contextualized manner, and users’ benefits in providing personal data clearly explained. To test the merits of this approach, we conducted a user experiment that compared two versions of a personalized web store: one with a traditional global disclosure and one that additionally provides contextualized explanations of privacy practices and personaliza tion benefits. We found that subjects in the second condition were sign ifi cantly more willing to share personal data with the website, rated its privacy practices and the perceived benefit resulting from data disclosure sig ni fi cantly higher, and also made considerably more purchases. We discuss the implications of these results and point out open research questions.

This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (grant DST 0307504), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG grant no. GRK 316/2), and by Humboldt Foundation (TransCoop program). We would like to thank Christoph Graupner, Louis Posern and Thomas Molter for their help in conducting the user experiment described herein.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697-3425, U.S.A

    Alfred Kobsa

  2. Institute of Information Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Spandauer Str. 1, 10178, Berlin, Germany

    Maximilian Teltzrow

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  1. Alfred Kobsa
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  2. Maximilian Teltzrow
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International,  

    David Martin

  2. The Free Haven Project,  

    Andrei Serjantov

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Kobsa, A., Teltzrow, M. (2005). Contextualized Communication of Privacy Practices and Personalization Benefits: Impacts on Users’ Data Sharing and Purchase Behavior. In: Martin, D., Serjantov, A. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PET 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3424. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11423409_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11423409_21

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26203-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31960-3

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